Therapy for Young Adults in Brea & Online Across CA + AZ
Find clarity in what you want, who you’re becoming, and the path you want to create for yourself.
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There can be a lot to keep up with in young adulthood. Work, school, finances, relationships, family responsibilities, and decisions about what comes next can all compete for your attention at the same time. You may find yourself procrastinating, struggling to get started, or feeling like you’re constantly trying to catch up, even when you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself to stay on top of things.
When there’s already so much to manage, even small decisions can begin to feel like one more thing you have to figure out. You might be wondering why things that seem manageable for everyone else feel so difficult for you, or become hard on yourself when you aren’t accomplishing as much as you think you should.
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Relationships can become more complicated as you begin figuring out what you want from friendships, dating, family, and the people closest to you. You may notice that you’re quick to consider how someone else feels while having a harder time identifying your own needs, especially when expressing them could create tension or disappoint someone you care about.
Maybe you hold things in until you’re frustrated, agree to things you don’t really want, or spend a lot of time wondering whether you’re asking for too much. You may want to feel more comfortable being yourself in your relationships without feeling like staying connected requires you to set aside parts of yourself.
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It can be difficult to figure out what you want when it seems like everyone around you is moving forward. You may look at friends who seem settled in their careers, relationships, or next steps and wonder whether you’re behind, especially when your own direction feels uncertain or keeps changing.
At the same time, you may be sorting through what you actually want versus what you’ve assumed you should want by now. Decisions about work, school, relationships, where to live, or what comes next can carry a lot of weight when you’re worried about making the wrong choice. You may find yourself looking for reassurance that you’re on the right path when what you really want is to feel more confident finding a path that makes sense for you.
There’s a lot to figure out when you’re still figuring out yourself.
MAYBE YOU ARE…
When you’re figuring out your life, it can be hard to know what actually feels like yours.
Young adulthood comes with more freedom to make your own choices, but that freedom can also bring a lot of uncertainty. You may be making decisions about work, relationships, friendships, where you want to live, or what you want your future to look like, often without knowing whether the choices you’re making will turn out the way you hope.
At the same time, you’re not making those decisions in a vacuum. You may have ideas about what you should be doing by now, what a successful life is supposed to look like, or which choices would make the most sense to the people around you. Some of those expectations may come from your family or culture, while others may come from your peers, social media, or the plans you once imagined for yourself.
When all of those voices are present, it can become difficult to hear your own. You may find yourself choosing what seems practical even when you’re not sure it’s what you want, staying with something because changing direction feels like failing, or looking at what everyone else is doing for reassurance that you’re making the right choices.
And sometimes the answer really isn’t clear yet. Part of young adulthood is discovering more about yourself through the choices you make, the relationships you have, the things that don’t work out, and the directions you decide to change. Therapy can give you space to sort through those experiences without requiring you to already know where they’re leading.
Over time, the work can become less about finding the one “right” path and more about becoming familiar with what matters to you, recognizing what feels meaningful, and developing greater trust in your ability to make decisions even when you don’t know exactly what comes next.
MAKING ROOM FOR WHAT COMES NEXT
You don’t need a perfect plan to begin creating a life that feels like your own.
Finding your way doesn’t require feeling completely certain about every decision you make. Sometimes it means giving yourself room to try something, learn from what happens, change your mind, and discover more about yourself along the way.
You’re allowed to make choices based on what you know about yourself now while remaining open to the possibility that things may change.
How I approach Young Adult THerapy
Understanding what has shaped you can help you discover what you want to carry forward.
Young adulthood often brings you into a different relationship with the expectations, roles, and ways of thinking you’ve grown up with. As you make more decisions for yourself, you may begin questioning what still fits, what you want to do differently, and what parts of yourself you’re still getting to know.
Drawing from psychodynamic and relational therapy, we can explore how your experiences and relationships have shaped the way you see yourself, what you expect from yourself, and how you navigate decisions and relationships now. This isn’t about deciding that everything you learned needs to be left behind. It’s about creating enough space to become curious about what feels meaningful to you and what you want to carry forward.
Sometimes you can know what you want and still find it difficult to act on it. You might know that changing direction doesn’t mean you’ve failed and still feel uneasy about starting over, or recognize that you’re allowed to make a different choice while worrying about how someone you care about will respond.
Drawing from Somatic Experiencing® and NARM, we can slow down and pay attention to what happens in your body, emotions, and relationships when these moments arise. This gives us another way to explore the space between what you understand intellectually and what you experience internally, while helping you become more familiar with yourself as you navigate uncertainty, relationships, and the choices ahead of you.
WHAT THERAPY CAN LOOK LIKE
Therapy gives us space to slow things down and get curious about what’s happening underneath.
Some sessions may begin with something happening in your life currently. You might be trying to decide whether to change jobs, questioning a relationship, feeling overwhelmed by everything on your plate, or comparing yourself to friends who seem more certain about where their lives are going. We can start with whatever feels most present and take the time to understand what’s happening for you beneath it.
As we talk, we may become curious about what makes a particular decision feel so difficult, whose expectations you’re considering alongside your own, or what happens when you imagine choosing one direction over another. We might notice that you can easily explain what makes the most sense but have a harder time knowing what you actually want, or that part of you feels excited about a possibility while another part immediately begins thinking about everything that could go wrong.
There may also be moments when we slow things down and pay attention to what’s happening in your body or emotions rather than trying to think your way toward an answer. Other times, we may make connections between what you’re navigating now and earlier experiences, relationships, or expectations that have shaped how you approach uncertainty, responsibility, or making choices for yourself.
Therapy isn’t about me telling you which path to take or helping you arrive at the “right” answer. It’s a place where we can understand what’s making things difficult, make room for what you’re still discovering about yourself, and help you become more able to make choices that reflect what matters to you—even when you can’t know exactly where those choices will lead.
IMAGINE FEELING MORE GROUNDED IN YOURSELF WHILE…
Making decisions with less pressure to know exactly how everything will turn out before you take the next step
Recognizing what you want without immediately comparing it to what everyone around you seems to be doing
Expressing what you need in your relationships while making room for the fact that other people may feel differently
Changing direction when something no longer feels right without automatically seeing it as evidence that you made the wrong choice
Moving at a pace that makes sense for you instead of measuring your life against where you think you should be by now
IS YOUNG ADULT THERAPY RIGHT FOR YOU?
You don’t have to be in crisis or wait for the perfect time to begin therapy.
Young adult therapy can be a space to give attention to what’s happening in your life before it becomes overwhelming. Maybe you’re navigating changes in your relationships, work, school, family, or sense of yourself, or you’ve simply started noticing patterns that you want to understand differently.
You may also be doing many of the things you expected to be doing and still feel like something isn’t quite working for you. There doesn’t have to be one major event or clearly defined problem that brings you to therapy. Sometimes wanting more space to understand yourself, your relationships, and how you want to move through this stage of your life is enough of a place to begin.
FAQs About Therapy for Young Adults
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Young adult therapy offers space to explore the challenges and changes that can come with becoming more independent and building a life of your own. You might bring in concerns about relationships, work or school, family, identity, anxiety, overwhelm, or uncertainty about what you want. Therapy can help you better understand what you’re experiencing and the patterns that may be shaping how you navigate this stage of your life.
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There isn’t one particular reason you need to come to therapy. We might work with anxiety, stress, relationship or family concerns, self-doubt, difficulty setting boundaries, procrastination or feeling overwhelmed, comparison, life transitions, or uncertainty about your direction. You can also bring in something that feels difficult even if you don’t yet have a clear name for what’s going on.
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No. Young adulthood can include many different stages of life, whether you’re in school, working, changing careers, living independently, living with family, navigating relationships, or moving through a transition. Our work will focus on what’s happening in your life and what feels important to you rather than where you think you’re supposed to be at this age.
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Sometimes you can understand something intellectually and still have a very different response when you’re actually living it. You may know that it’s okay to disappoint someone and still feel anxious when you set a boundary, or understand that changing direction isn’t failure while still feeling uneasy about doing it. Somatic therapy gives us room to notice what happens in your body alongside your thoughts and emotions, helping us explore these experiences beyond what you already understand intellectually.
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Yes. I offer in-person therapy for young adults in Brea, California, as well as online therapy for adults located throughout California and Arizona. Both in-person and virtual sessions use the same somatic, relational, and depth-oriented approach and are tailored to what brings you to therapy.
Let’s find clarity in all the noise & make room for who you’re becoming.
Therapy can give you space to slow down, hear yourself more clearly, and move forward in ways that feel meaningful to you.
SUPPORT AWAITS YOU
SUPPORT AWAITS YOU
Therapy for Young Adults in Brea, CA
I offer in-person therapy for young adults at my office in Brea, California, as well as online therapy throughout California and Arizona. Whether we meet in person or virtually, our work can make space for the relationships, transitions, uncertainty, pressure, and questions that may be part of this stage of your life.
265 S Randolph Ave, Brea, CA 92821
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