Young Adults
Therapy for Young Adults in Santa Monica and Across California
Your twenties are marketed as a decade of possibility and experienced, by a lot of people, as a decade of being quietly certain that everyone else received instructions you did not. Both things can be true, and the gap between them is where most of this work happens.
I see young adults who are functioning by every visible measure — employed, in a relationship, texting their friends back — and who describe the inside of their week as something closer to weather they are surviving than a life they are conducting.
What Comes In
The things people in their twenties actually bring
The most common is intensity that nobody warned them about. Feelings that arrive at full volume and take the whole day, relationships that go from stranger to essential in three weeks and then detonate, a fury at a minor slight that is out of proportion to the slight and entirely proportionate to something older. This is where DBT skills earn their keep, and where the question of what the intensity is for matters just as much.
The second is a decision paralysis that looks like laziness from the outside. Every choice feels permanent, every path forecloses four others, and the honest fear underneath is usually not about the job at all. It is about discovering that you picked wrong and that this is now simply who you are.
The third is the first real reckoning with family. Distance, or therapy, or simply being twenty-six, has made something visible about how you grew up that was invisible while you were inside it. That is disorienting, and frequently arrives with guilt attached, because noticing something about your parents feels like an accusation.
And a lot of people arrive because a relationship ended in a way that frightened them. Not the ending — the version of themselves that showed up during it.
In the Room
Common shapes this takes
High-functioning, privately unwell
The performance is excellent and costs everything you have. Nobody in your life has any idea, which becomes its own separate loneliness on top of the original problem.
Relationships at full speed
Fast attachment, sharp ruptures, a pattern of endings you can now predict and cannot yet interrupt. We work on the prediction and the interruption both.
The plan that stopped fitting
You did the degree, took the job, moved to the city. It is fine. The alarming part is that fine is what you were told to aim for.
How This Runs
Direct, unpatronizing, and yours to steer
I do not talk to people in their twenties as though they are a slightly larger version of a teenager. You will get what I actually think, in the same words I would use with anybody else, and if I am wrong about something you are welcome to say so in the hour.
Practically, most young adults I work with use video. The logistics of a twenties life — shared apartments, shifting schedules, a car that is a negotiation — make a fixed weekly drive the first thing to break. Video sessions run from wherever you can close a door, and yes, parked cars count.
Fees are the same regardless of format: three hundred dollars for a fifty-minute session and four hundred for an intake, out of network. I would rather that number be plainly on the page than discovered awkwardly in a first call.
Honest Limits
Two honest things
Some of this work is short and focused and some of it is not. Patterns that involve attachment or early family history generally take longer than anyone would like. You are not locked in, we review openly, and stopping is a legitimate thing to decide out loud.
I also cannot promise where this ends up. What I can say is that we will check whether it is doing anything, and change the approach if it is not.
Where to Next
Related areas of the work
Free Consultation
Start with a conversation, not a commitment.
The first step is a free consultation call. We talk about what brings you here, what you have already tried, and whether working together makes sense. If I am not the right fit, I will say so and point you somewhere better.
- · You request a time on the form, and I confirm by email
- · Telehealth anywhere in California, or in person in Santa Monica
- · Private pay, with superbills for out-of-network reimbursement
- · 48 hours' notice for changes or cancellations
Or call the office at (213) 761-8555.