Sara Mathews Dixon: Teen Therapy in a High-Conflict Divorce

Finding a therapist for your child is one problem. Knowing what to ask before you hand your kid over is a different problem, and almost nobody hands you the list. This episode is that list, from someone who has been the therapist on the other side of it for twenty-two years.

Sara Mathews Dixon is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in Darien, Connecticut, and she also works by telehealth with clients across the country. She chose social work as a high school senior after a conversation with a teacher, and her twenty-two years since have run through psychiatric hospitals, substance abuse clinics, group homes for boys, and five years on an adolescent unit working with teenagers and their families. Her practice is adolescents now. She is also available to her clients around the clock, on the reasoning that ten minutes on the phone at three in the afternoon can keep a panicking teenager's whole week from coming apart.

Sara works psychodynamically, which she explains as treating the person as a puzzle: not only what is happening this week, but the whole life story that produced it, including the trauma that runs down through a family before anyone recognizes it as trauma. That is why she will tell you up front that she does not do six sessions and out. She and Lisa compare notes on the no-magic-wand conversation they both have to have, and on who turns out to be a good client, including the person who only came because their spouse insisted.

The rest is what a parent in a custody fight actually needs. How to describe coercive control without the clinical words. Why a therapist who is lied to daily is harder to charm than your friends were. How she builds rapport by telling a teenager she is not the expert on their life and they will have to teach her, and what it meant when a fifteen-year-old who had not cried at her father's funeral cried in her office over a game of Jenga. What confidentiality does and does not stop you from asking about your own child. What she says to a parent who is undermining the plan from the other house. How she walks a child back to the facts without ever accusing the parent who fed them the story. What she requires before she will agree to reunification therapy, and why a name that came from your ex's attorney is not automatically the wrong name.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The questions to ask before you hire a therapist for your child
• How to describe coercive control to a clinician when you don't have the vocabulary
• Why a therapist who is lied to every day is harder to charm than your friends were
• How rapport gets built with a teenager who does not want to be in the room
• What confidentiality does and doesn't stop you from asking about your own child
• What she says to a parent who is undermining the treatment plan from the other house
• How to respond when your child repeats something untrue: ask about facts, don't accuse
• What has to be finished before she will agree to take on reunification therapy

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Sara's background: 22 years across hospitals, group homes, and private practice
3:00 Available around the clock, and a psychodynamic approach to the whole story
11:00 What to ask when you're hiring a therapist for your child
15:00 "My ex will charm the therapist": why clinicians aren't fooled the same way
17:00 Building rapport, and the 15-year-old who cried over a game of Jenga
23:00 Confidentiality, and how a parent can still ask how their kid is doing
27:00 Counter-parenting, and the line she takes with the parent doing it
29:00 When your child repeats a false narrative: facts, not accusations
37:00 Reunification therapy, and what has to happen first
43:00 Testifying, hearsay, guardians ad litem, and where to find her

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Sara Mathews Dixon, LCSW at SMD Psychotherapy: https://www.smdpsychotherapy.com/

🎧 More with Sara Mathews Dixon on this podcast
Ep 60: Choosing the Right Therapist for Your Family

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.