COUNSELING FOR YOUNG(ISH) ADULTS
How do I figure out who I am?
My friends have moved out but I don’t feel ready to live on my own.
How do I know if I believe the things that I do because that’s what my parents taught me?
How do i know if I'm ready for the responsibility of living on my own?
My beliefs are very different from my family’s, how can I get along with them?
I don’t know what to do with my life, but I feel pressure to have already decided on a career.
These questions and more are all ones that young adults face. It can feel like overnight you’re supposed to know what you want to do with your life. You’re expected to be able to make it on your own, but the reality is that there are societal forces that make this extremely difficult for many young adults.
Narrative Therapy for Young Adults
Narrative therapy is an approach to counseling that uses narrative or story-telling as a metaphor for understanding how individuals come to experience and understand problems that affect their lives, and as a device or vehicle for developing alternative understandings, experiences and actions. Repositioning people as the expert of their own lives, I ask questions that access these stories. Stories are significant because they open doors to other ways of being and new ways of traveling in this world that are often more helpful, hopeful and healing.
As a narrative therapist, I believe that people possess many skills, values, knowledge, opinions, abilities and beliefs to help them reduce the influence of a problem. When problem saturated self stories become entrenched it is easy for a young person’s identity to be overwhelmed by negative identity conclusions. In narrative therapy the practitioner works collaboratively with the client to challenge these dominant problem-saturated stories and re-author alternative stories that break from the influence of the problems and establish a preferred identity.
How Counseling Can Help
You will get in touch with the things you value in life, so you can start to feel like you are on the right path
You will do the necessary soul-searching to find meaning in your life and pursue the things that are important to you
You will process any painful memories from your childhood and move forward from a happy and healthy place
You will develop the skills to cultivate a fulfilling social life and incorporate meaningful relationships into your adult life, so you can find where you belong.
Begin Counseling Today in Maryland and Pennsylvania
When you come for Fostering Hopes Counseling we can help you in this transition into adulthood so that you can be confident as you face all of these challenges and decisions. To start you counseling journey, follow these easy steps:
Counseling for young adults isn’t the only service we offer in our Maryland and Pennsylvania counseling clinic. Among the other mental health services Fostering Hopes Counseling provides are PTSD and trauma treatment, depression counseling, counseling for college students, and religious trauma therapy.