In this interview, Shellee Howard of College Ready welcomes licensed clinical counselor Josh Harper, founder of Wave After Wave Counseling, to discuss the mental‑health challenges teens face during the COVID‑19 pandemic and the transition to college. The conversation begins with a description of common teen struggles—feeling stuck, lonely, overwhelmed, or angry—and a real‑life call from a distressed parent. Harper outlines how anxiety can manifest in teens (withdrawal, racing thoughts, fear of illness, increased negative behaviors) and how parents can differentiate normal pandemic frustration from clinically significant anxiety by looking at functional impairment and warning signs such as declining grades, substance use, self‑harm, or expressed desire for outside help. Harper then offers concrete parental strategies: focus on factual information, distinguish what is within versus outside a teen’s control, foster meaningful connections, and help teens find purpose through activities like part‑time jobs or service. He emphasizes the skill of tolerating uncertainty, especially as students prepare for college, and suggests that learning to be comfortable with the unknown is a developmental milestone. The interview also highlights College Ready’s upcoming 12‑week “Passion Project” masterclass, which encourages students to discover their gifts, serve others, and build leadership skills. Finally, Harper explains what a counseling engagement looks like: initial parent‑involved sessions for minors, building trust, tailoring interventions, and providing practical coping skills, with flexibility for adults to attend independently. Contact information (email, phone, website) is provided for families seeking counseling. The dialogue ends with mutual appreciation and a call to action for parents to support their teens’ mental health and college readiness.
Chapters
Hi, good afternoon. This is Shellee Howard with College Ready. I have a special guest today that I cannot wait to share with you, but before I do, I wanted to ask you, how is your student doing? Are they online? Are they hybrid? Are they in school, out of school? Where are they at and how are they doing? That's the question I want to ask today. Our guest is going to speak to some of that, but before we do, stay with me for a minute. Does your student ever tell you they feel stuck, lonely, frustrated, overwhelmed? Do you think they spend too much time on their phone? I think as parents, we probably all think that. Do they lack inspiration? Have they gone the opposite from being really, really busy hyper busy to now you can't motivate them to just go outside. Let me tell you, this is unfortunately very normal. So as you know, I help students all over the globe, and this pandemic has definitely affected everybody in their own way depending on where you live. My students in, you know, Michigan or South Dakota, way different than Southern California. So we don't want to assume that anybody is doing one way or the other, but I will tell you there are students that are thriving. There are students that are using this gift of time to really self-reflect, to spend time with family, to do things they've always wanted to do. So think about this for a moment. I got a phone call today right before we got on, and I had a very very sad mom who said, I don't know how to help my daughter. She seems depressed, but I don't know what depression looks like. She seems angry, like everything just— she was an advocate and she's fired up and she, she just wants to fight the world. She thinks that online school is a joke and that she's not getting an education. If your child is feeling any of this, I want to introduce you to Josh Harper, a friend, a colleague, somebody that I trust with our teenage students. So Josh, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background?
Yeah, you bet, Shellee Howard. First of all, thank you for having me. It's great to be here and be part of the College Ready family. I've heard so much about it. I love what you do, and just, it's such an honor to be part of this. But yes, my name is Josh Harper for everyone out there. I have my own counseling practice here in Laguna Hills called Wave After Wave Counseling. So I'm a licensed professional clinical counselor. So that's at the highest level that a counselor can be here in California. What I say is that I specialize in working with kids, teens, and young adults. So I generally work with people between the ages of 10 and 25, although I do work with some younger, some younger kids and some older adults as well. But generally ages 10 to 25. Just a quick word about my background. I was a public school teacher for 4 years teaching elementary school. And then I was a youth pastor at my church for 5 years until I started becoming a counselor. And now I've been in the counseling world, this is my 9th year as a counselor. So love what I get to do. Love having my own practice and yeah, I'm really happy to be here, Shellee Howard. So thanks for having me.
Awesome. So if you don't mind, Josh, I'd like to ask you a couple of things that I often hear from my families, and I wrote them down because they're pretty consistent. These are some pain points and some things that, that parents have reached out. So the first thing is, with everything going on in the world these days, you've been noticing a lot more— or I have, everybody has— has been noticing a lot more anxiety in people. Can you talk about what that anxiety may look like or how to spot it as a parent and what we can do?
Yeah, sure. You know, it's, it's, first of all, I mean, this is just a really tough time for everybody, but for teenagers, in some ways, this may be even more difficult with their brains still developing. It's an especially tough time on kids. The anxiety right now, people are having a lot of anxiety about a whole variety of things, whether it's related to the virus. You know, there's some people that are just still very, of course, very and very reasonably still anxious about the virus, still very fearful. And this may end up having a big impact on their lives. For example, you know, they may be withdrawing from a lot of their usual activities. Some of them are obviously totally canceled, but even with things that they might normally do, they maybe feel anxious about that, maybe are totally isolating from all their relationships out of fear of the virus and not getting together with anyone, which also is, you know, in some ways really understandable too. Some people are having a lot of anxiety about themselves or family members getting sick and just very fearful of that. This, you know, another way that the anxiety may look these days, Shellee, is a lot of people are just experiencing overwhelmed thoughts, maybe a racing mind, overthinking things. Maybe, you know, they're trying to lie down and go to bed at night and their mind just keeps racing over and over with their worries and their thoughts, but these are just some of the things that we're seeing a lot of right now in the mental health community with just this crazy past year that we've all had.
So as a parent, how do we know the difference between normal COVID frustration and this anxiety that they need to seek help for?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, good. That's a great question. The main thing to me when you ask that is, how much is this interfering with their lives, right? Like the virus and the pandemic is interfering with all of our lives, to be sure. It's been super frustrating and annoying. But if we're looking at a teenager, are we noticing some, like, are there increased negative behaviors? Is the kid withdrawing a lot? Is the kid missing things that they normally would not miss? Obviously their grades, you know, are their grades going down? Are we seeing an increase in negative behaviors? Whether that is like, obviously like drugs or alcohol, whether it's self-harm, whether it's suicidal thoughts or just behaviors like defiance at home. If any of those things are increasing, then that might be a sign that, okay, this is a little bit more serious. This might be a sign that that person could use counseling. Also, of course, if the teenager, him or herself, speaks up and says that, "I think I could talk to someone. I think I need to, I think I need counseling," or, "I think I need someone outside of this family to talk to," that's not an offense to the family or anything. It's just, that's just normal, and that's what a lot of people really need and benefit from. So those are, those are kind of some of the signs that, hey, maybe this, this person might need more help than just the average that we're all struggling with.
Yeah, good to know.
Now what about for teens getting ready to, to go into college? I've noticed a lot of teens have a hard time with not knowing what's going on next.
Do you have any advice?
Yeah, yeah, um, first of all, I think we need to remember that it's normal to want to know what's going to happen next, and it's kind of a skill to develop this ability to be okay with not knowing how life is going to be. I mean, and you and I struggle with that sometimes as adults. Like, adults, we want to know, we want control, we want to know what's going to happen next. So for teenagers feeling like so much of life is out of control and who knows what's going to happen with, you know, whether it's what college I get into or whether I'm going to have a real graduation this year or not, you know, We, we all don't like to have things outside of our control like that. And so, so I think like learning to develop the skill of being okay with not having full control or ability to determine what exactly is going to happen next, not having that, that, you know, full control over it is something that we learn to develop and get better at over the course of our lives.
So as a parent, sometimes we feel like we have to walk on eggshells. Maybe not every parent, but I've had a few tell me how— what, what can they say or what can they do to support their student who may be going through some of that fear of the unknown?
Yeah, yeah, great question. So I would say a couple, couple ideas would be to help that teenager focus on what are What are the facts right now? Rather than maybe a lot of opinions that are out there or a lot of stuff on social media, a lot of sensational news stories maybe, try to focus on the facts to help you, you know, determine what you should do about things. Another idea is, for parents, is like trying to help their kids to identify what is in your control versus what is out of your control. Because what's out of control is maybe how the virus is going on a national level, but what's in your control is maybe limiting how many people you spend time with right now, or when you do have a bunch of downtime and free time, how can you use that to better yourself as a person rather than maybe just spending hours and hours on screens? I mean, we all, we all do that, but for teenagers especially, that can be a big temptation. Another idea would be for parents to help kids to see the importance of connecting in their lives. Like, have meaningful connections and relationships with family and also with friends. And then maybe one final thought is try to help your teenager see some purpose to his or her life. Try to develop something that helps them feel that they have a purpose. Let me give you an example. If a teenager is 16 years old and they've never had a job before, and they're finding right now that they have a ton of downtime, maybe applying to some jobs. And if they get something where they can work 10 or 15 hours a week, and they're making maybe, I don't know, $13, $14 an hour, and then all of a sudden they get their first paycheck and they see that maybe they made $200 or something. I mean, that is a really, really big deal and super exciting. And that can help that teenager to see that, you know, to have some purpose to their life. And maybe they make a goal that some— my goal is to get $1,000 in my bank account, you know, that, that's a big goal to work towards. So having something that creates some new purpose for their lives can be really helpful during this time.
I love that. You have no idea, but I am actually launching on February 14th at 11 AM. We're kicking off our very first inspirational passion project masterclass. And—
Oh, cool.
Because what we're finding is when students take the, the focus off of them and what's happening to them and they turn it and put it on how can I help somebody else in need, they really start to be opened and excited and they, they are interacting and it's not protected because they're helping somebody else. So I love that it just ties in perfectly that our Passion Project is all about helping students to connect with what am I good at, what, what are my gifts and my talents. And if we stay focused on the positives about who they are, I think it's a lot harder for them to go the other direction. And so once a week for 12 weeks, I'm going to be helping students to learn leadership skills, to learn how they would like to see the world changed and what can they do, not what can't they do. We're going to focus on reflecting on what are my gifts so I can help somebody else. And I'm going to lead this group, which means we're going to be interacting.
All sharing what we're truly passionate about.
Wow, that's really cool. That, I mean, that sounds like a great thing for teenagers to be like attending or like focusing on. And yeah, when we get our minds off of ourselves and onto other people and how we can help, or, you know, it kind of, it helps us with our own problems actually.
Absolutely. So I was really excited that you said that because I came up with this. Um, I was talking to a student who just found felt stuck. And I'm like, how do I help them get out of their own way? What, what can I do to inspire them? I can motivate them all day long, but I truly want to like give them, what am I good at? Do I like to lead or follow? Am I an introvert or extrovert? How do I lead people in the, in my genius?
I mean, think about if everybody had 200 service hours done by the time they were 17, what our world would look like.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
And so during a time of lemons, I want the students to understand, here's how to make lemonade. Smile, push through. And I know not— it's not for every student. There's some really hard situations going on. I don't mean to make light of them at all, but I'm always about what can we do. And if that doesn't do it, then I send them to you. And then you give them skills that can help them to get back to what can we do. So speaking of that, skills, what does it look like if I send my student to you? What does that behind the scenes feel like? Or what am I putting them into if I send them your way?
Yeah, yeah, good question. Well, it depends how old the student is. So If someone is 17 or younger, you know, they're a minor. So definitely gonna want to really set it up through the parents and have a lot of parental involvement, especially at the first session. You know, I would sit down with the parents and we're gonna talk through a lot about the student's life and history. Tell me all about what's happened over the course of their life for these first 17, 16 years or whatever. And then, you know, the second part of the session is gonna be really getting the student involved and then Future sessions are probably more with just the student and I working together. And it's gonna be really about developing a trusting relationship where, where that person feels like, okay, I can talk to Josh. He really cares. He's there for me. He's gonna help me. And then every student is gonna, my approach is gonna be different depending on them and what they're going through. But, you know, I'm gonna listen closely. I'm gonna care, but then also give them some actual skills to use in their regular everyday life. And then, in between sessions, hopefully they work on things, come back and tell me how their life has been this past week or two, and then we kind of go from there. And then really quick, if a student is 18 or older, then that's a little bit different. They don't have to have their parents involved, but sometimes they, a lot of times they will want their parents to be part of their counseling, which is cool. But if not, then technically an 18-year-old or older could just talk with me without even letting their parents know. Since they're an adult.
Absolutely. And what is the best way for somebody to get in touch with you?
Yeah, um, I have a few different ways. I mean, they can, they can call me, they can send me an email, um, they can go to my website, uh, waveafterwavcounseling.com. But maybe the best way would just be to send an email to josh@waveafterwavcounseling.com, um, or just give me a call.
Excellent. Well, thank you, Josh, so much. And What a gift. So, um, college-ready families, please know that we're here to support you, not only just to get into college and graduate debt-free, but really to help your student grow, mature, and have a career that they actually love. So thank you, Josh, so much for your time, and I look forward to, um, our continued partnership.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Shellee, for having me. And if anyone needs help with, you know, finding the right therapist and, you know, maybe they're looking for a female and they are stuck, you know, they can reach out to me and I will be happy to help them. I generally work with the guys, but if someone is looking for someone and they can't find it, I'm happy to help with that too.
