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Get Started with a Call: 512-981-5279

Austin Therapy for Girls logo

Award-Winning Book

Pink Chaos: Navigating the Mother-Daughter Relationship with Your Tween

Written by ATFG founder, Shayna Barksdale, Pink Chaos is a guide for moms who are navigating the stormy waters of parenting daughters aged 9 to 12.

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ACL starts tomorrow, and it’s our favorite time of year. Right up there with a good mud fest and hearing a band you’ve never heard of and loving them by the second song. If your girl is headed to Zilker this weekend (or you are), here are our safety tips. Save this, send it to her, and then go have the best time. 1. Pick a meet-up spot. Cell service gets spotty once you’re inside. Decide where you’ll find each other before you need to. 2. Charge everything. Leave the house at 100% and bring a portable charger. Share your location with at least one person who isn’t at the fest. 3. Arrive together, leave together. Nobody walks off alone. Not for a bathroom break, not to beat the crowd, not because “I’ll just be a second.” 4. Water, shade, snacks, repeat. Rain or not, standing in a crowd all day is hot. Eat something real and get out of the sun now and then. 5. Know where help is. When you walk in, find the nearest medical tent, bathroom, and water station. Takes two minutes. 6. Guard your drink. Only drink what you opened or watched get poured. Walked away from it? Get a new one. No exceptions. 7. It’s okay to step away. Too loud, too crowded, too much? Find some shade and breathe. Going home early is always allowed, and nobody cool will care. #acl #austintherapyforgirls #pinkchaos #safety
Okay. “Pink Clouding.” Let’s talk about it. Pink clouding is a recovery term. It’s that early stretch of sobriety where everything feels euphoric and handled and you’re pretty sure you’re cured. You are not cured. You’re on a cloud. The ground is still down there. Taylor uses it for a relationship that started about two weeks after a breakup. Which means she never did the sad part. No crying in the car. No deleting and re-downloading the app. No sitting in it. She went straight from ending one thing to the shiny high of a new one, and the new person got to be the cloud. Here’s what I want every 20-something to notice, because it’s the part that matters: She hurt someone. And she doesn’t beat herself up about it. There’s a difference between guilt and shame, and it’s not a small one. Shame says “I’m a bad person.” Guilt says “I did a bad thing.” Shame sends you into the spiral — I ruin everything, I always do this, what’s wrong with me. Guilt lets you look at the actual thing you did, feel bad about that, and go apologize for it. She picked guilt. She named exactly what she did, said she was sorry, and let it be the size it actually was. Not a verdict on her whole character. A thing she did while she wasn’t ready. That’s shame resilience. That’s the skill. You’ll mess up in a relationship at some point in your twenties — probably more than once — and the question isn’t whether you feel bad. It’s whether you feel bad about the thing or about being you. If you’re in the cloud right now, or you just landed, we work with 20-somethings too. In person in South Austin or virtual anywhere in Texas. Link in bio. 🩷 #pinkclouding #thelifeofashowgirl #taylorswift #swifties #therapy
Pink Chaos is #1 in Parenting Emotions & Feelings on the free Kindle chart right now. For Daughters Day, the Kindle version is FREE through Sunday. This book is me on your couch with a cup of coffee telling you: your tween isn’t broken, you’re not failing, and the eye rolls won’t last forever. One mom called it “her bible of getting through these tween years.” I’ll take it. Grab it before it goes back to $4.99. Link in bio. And if it helps you, an honest review on Amazon means the world to me. Happy Daughters Day to every mom out there loving a girl who’s figuring herself out. 💗 #PinkChaos #NationalDaughtersDay #MomsOfTweens #TweenGirls
A mom told me this and I’m putting it on a billboard. Or, you know, Instagram. Pink Chaos turns two this week, and the Kindle is FREE through Sunday. 🩷 Link in bio. Real scripts for the car, the kitchen, and the eye roll. My mom is in every chapter. Send it to the friend who needs it! #PinkChaos #girlmom #tweendaughter #motherdaughter #nationaldaughtersday
New season. New Glow Girl group. Same message: she’s not doing hard things alone this fall. 🌟 Six weeks, small group, girls 4th–high school. Link in bio — spots are limited. #GlowGirl #AustinTherapyForGirls #TweenGirls #TeenGirls #SouthAustin GirlsGroups AustinMoms
POV: it’s 100 degrees, school started, and you’re choosing joy anyway #saturdayvibes
teen therapists near me in austin

Child, tween, teen and young adult  therapists in Austin, supporting girls ages 5–25 with anxiety, ADHD, OCD, friendship challenges, self-esteem, and life transitions.

8701 Menchaca Rd., Building 2, Suite 201, Austin TX 78748

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