Teens & Emerging Adults
Adolescence and emerging adulthood are exciting phases in a person’s life. These are years of exploration, finding your authentic self, gaining independence, and forming deeply supportive relationships. However, they can also be full of fear, self-doubt, and isolation. I believe this is especially true in a post-COVID world in which in-person connection has increasingly been replaced with scrolling. Today’s teens and young adults are the first to be raised with smartphones and social media, and they’re also the first age group in a century whose education and lives were collectively disrupted and put on pause by the threat of the pandemic. The past decade has also been a period of heightened social and political division and violence that we can witness nonstop at the touch of a screen. This has left many people transitioning into adulthood with the feeling that the world is unsafe.
If you are a teen or young adult, you might often feel like you’re being pulled in multiple different directions.
Being unique vs. fitting in
Knowing a lot of people vs. feeling alone
Wanting support from your caregivers vs. wanting to be independent
Focusing on the present vs. planning for the future
Feeling like you have all the time in the world vs. feeling like you’re already behind
Hoping to make the world a better place vs. wondering if that’s even possible
Using AI and social media vs. fearing their negative effects
Being informed about current events and people’s suffering vs. feeling overwhelmed and wanting to shut it all out
I want to help you find balance and to hold all of these feelings together. You can be yourself and belong. You can have community and sometimes feel alone. You can gain more independence and accept support from others. You can feel overwhelmed by the world and afraid about its future while also feeling hopeful and finding meaningful ways to create positive change. Finding that balance isn’t about figuring out the exact right way to be and not moving. Balance about accepting the back and forth as your needs change and as the world changes around you. Sometimes you’ll lean more to one side and other times you’ll lean more to the other side, and that’s okay.
When we meet, you can show up however you need to. Sometimes you might want to talk about whatever’s going on and other times you might want to show me what it’s like through art, miniatures in a sandtray, or in a Minecraft world. You can read more about how I do therapy here. Wherever you’re at is good enough, and whatever you’re able to do is enough.
