HK...
I have been meaning to post on here for a few days, and am just finding the time to sit and do it. I'm so sorry that your dd has been dealing with this creep...and that it's hurting her so much. I can generally stomach when my kids get hurt physically (and have many gruesome stories to attest to that)...but watching them deal with emotional pain in the realm of rejection and acceptance - torture! That pain is soul pain.
Anyway, as someone who does therapy with tweens/teens/college age, here's my 2 cents worth of advice in choosing a therapist for your dd: An adolescent therapist must choose wisely what walls they knock upon, prod, peek around, and pursue - and what walls they best leave be lest everything collapse. There is an art to this, and I feel this is the key factor for teens. They have defences up for a reason and sometimes desperately need to keep them up. Find a therapist who can talk to you about how they work with teens and how they deal with resistence. Find out how they include or disclude a parent from participating. My challenge is to walk a thin line between helping a parent feel equipped and plugged into their teen while giving the teen a private area to vent. It's a tricky line.
Sometimes, a parent and I decide a teen is just not ready for therapy - or that therapy might be harmful in some way. If the parent(s) wants, we work together to help a parent become the therapeutic go-between and to fine-tune ways a parent can increase their communication/positive relationship while still setting needed boundaries.
GL.
