What's on your mind: 80 topics young adults face, honestly sorted
From self-doubt to job hunting: 80 topics, each honestly sorted by where coaching helps and when counselling, therapy or a doctor fits better.
80 topics
What's on your mind right now
Topics many young adults know, wherever they come from. For each one you will find an honest note on where coaching can help and when other help fits better.
Go to the topics
For young adults aged 18 and over
Honestly sorted, even where coaching does not fit
No form, no test
If it is urgent right now
If you are in danger or thinking about harming yourself, contact the emergency services where you are right away, or a crisis service near you. This page and my coaching are not a crisis service.
What this page is about
This page is for young adults aged 18 and over. The topics range from self-doubt and family conflict to study and work and questions of meaning and faith. Some of them almost everyone knows, others affect only a few, and none of them is anything to be ashamed of.
The list is a collection of topics, not a scientific classification and not a diagnosis. It is meant to help you place what you are dealing with and find a good next place to turn.
Coaching is not psychotherapy and not medical treatment. Where a topic belongs there, it says so clearly.
What goes on inside
What goes on in your head and your feelings: self-doubt, anxiety, overthinking, lost motivation, loneliness or guilt. Some of it can be worked on in coaching, some belongs first with a doctor or a psychotherapist.
Persistent anxiety without a clear reason
A restlessness that is almost always there, even when nothing in particular is happening. Often it shows up in the body more than in your thoughts: a racing heart, tension, poor sleep.
If the anxiety has lasted for weeks or limits your daily life, talk to a doctor or a licensed psychotherapist. Persistent anxiety can be treated, and seeking help for it is a normal, sensible step.
Depression and loss of meaning
Everything feels heavy and empty, and things that used to matter to you hardly mean anything now. This is not a weakness of character or a lack of willpower.
If you have felt like this almost every day for more than two weeks, see a doctor or a licensed psychotherapist. Depression is common and treatable. If you are thinking about harming yourself or suicide, call the emergency services right away.
Fear of failure
You put off decisions and projects because a mistake feels like it would say something about your worth. Better not to start than to fail.
Fear of success and responsibility
A new role, more responsibility, a visible success: what you want also scares you. Sometimes you hold yourself back just before you get there.
Low self-confidence
You trust yourself less than your abilities would justify. Others often see your strengths more clearly than you do.
Self-criticism and comparing yourself with others
There is a strict voice in your head that is rarely satisfied. And someone else almost always seems further ahead, faster or better.
Emotional suppression and unexpressed feelings
You have learned to keep your feelings to yourself and keep functioning on the outside. Inside, though, things build up that come out at the wrong moment or wear you down.
Identity confusion: who am I?
Between the expectations of family, friends, culture and your own wishes, you sometimes don't know what truly belongs to you. Many people go through this between studying and a first job, or between two cultures.
Difficulty expressing yourself
You know what you think, but in conversations, meetings or discussions it doesn't come out the way you mean it, or not at all.
Distraction and difficulty concentrating
You sit down to a task and a few minutes later you're somewhere else, in your head or on your phone. At the end of the day a lot happened, but little got finished.
Loss of motivation
You know what you should do, but the drive is missing. Goals that used to pull you forward now feel distant or pointless.
Excessive sleep or chronic insomnia
You lie awake at night going over things, or you sleep a lot and are still exhausted. Either can change your whole day.
Ongoing sleep problems should be seen by a doctor first. A doctor can check for physical causes and recommend further help if needed.
Excessive attachment to others
Your mood depends heavily on whether certain people get in touch, like you or agree with you. Deciding on your own is hard.
Loneliness despite being around people
You are rarely alone and still don't feel seen. Conversations stay on the surface, and what really occupies you, you share with no one.
Fear of rejection or abandonment
You adapt so as not to lose anyone and avoid situations where you might be rejected. It protects you in the short term and narrows your life over time.
Low self-awareness
You often react before you notice what is going on inside you. What you really want and what drives you is not quite clear even to you.
High sensitivity to criticism
A critical remark hits you hard and stays with you for a long time, even when it was meant factually. So you tend to avoid feedback.
Overthinking
You go over decisions and conversations again and again, play through every option and still get nowhere. Thinking takes the place of acting.
Being stuck in the past and childhood trauma
Experiences from childhood or adolescence still have an effect today, in your thoughts, feelings or relationships. Some of it keeps coming back without you wanting it to.
For working through painful or traumatic experiences, a licensed psychotherapist is the right person to see, ideally one with experience in trauma therapy.
Persistent guilt
You often feel guilty, even about things that are out of your hands. When you think of yourself, you quickly feel selfish.
Family and the people around you
Pressure, comparison and conflict in the family: when your parents want a say in your decisions, conversations keep getting stuck, or you miss support at home.
Family pressure when making decisions
When it comes to study, work, where to live or who to marry, many people have a say, and your family's view often weighs more than your own. You don't want to disappoint anyone, nor live your life by someone else's plan.
Comparison with siblings or relatives
The sister with better grades, the cousin with the secure job: you are being measured, often without anyone meaning harm, and it makes you feel small.
Parents' excessive involvement in your life
You are an adult, but your parents still have a say in where you go, who you spend time with or how you spend your money. Often out of love and worry, and still you can't breathe.
Generational conflict and differences in outlook
Your parents grew up in a different time, with different values, opportunities and worries. What seems obvious to you feels strange to them, and the other way round.
Difficulty communicating with parents
Conversations with your parents always go the same way: one sentence and you are back in the old argument. Or you would rather say nothing at all.
Forced marriage or pressure to marry early
Your family or community is pushing you towards a marriage you don't want, or don't want yet. The pressure ranges from constant questions to threats.
No one may force you into a marriage. If you are being threatened, confined or pressured, contact a specialist service for forced marriage or violence, a person you trust or, if you are in danger, the police right away.
Lack of a role model in the family
For the path you want to take, there is no one in your family who has walked it before. You have to work a lot out on your own.
Fear-based rather than understanding-based parenting
You grew up with punishment, threats or shaming rather than explanations. Today you notice how that shapes the way you deal with mistakes, authority or yourself.
Ongoing family conflict
There is often tension at home, between your parents, with siblings or with you. You end up caught in the middle or withdraw to get some peace.
Lack of emotional support from family
Food, money or advice are taken care of, but feelings are hardly talked about. With what really moves you, you are on your own.
Study and work
Choosing a subject, motivation to study, job hunting, worry about your career and trouble at work: topics where coaching and career guidance can often help.
Unemployment and difficulty finding work
You send out applications and get rejections or no reply at all. Every week the pressure grows, on your finances and on your sense of worth.
Limited career development opportunities
You are working, but nothing moves: no new tasks, no promotion, no learning. You wonder whether to stay or move on.
Workplace exploitation and low pay
Unpaid overtime, pay that barely covers your costs, tasks far beyond your role: you feel used and at the same time see few alternatives.
Loss of motivation to study
Lectures, assignments, exams: you keep putting everything off and wonder what you are actually doing it for.
A field of study imposed by family
You are studying what your family considers sensible, such as medicine, law or engineering, and feel more and more clearly that your interest lies elsewhere.
Lack of practical training and skills
You have your degree, but job ads ask for experience you don't have yet. You don't know how to close the gap.
Fear about the professional future
Which jobs still have a future? What if you choose the wrong direction? The questions are big, and the answers stay unclear.
Migration as a forced choice
You are thinking about emigrating, less out of a sense of adventure than for lack of prospects. Or you have already left and are struggling with what you left behind.
Feeling undervalued or treated unfairly at work
Others get the interesting tasks or the credit for your work. You make an effort, and it is hardly noticed.
Difficulty balancing work and personal life
Work eats into your evenings and weekends, and friends and family lose out. And when you are off, your mind is still at work.
Love and relationships
Friendship, love and partnership: fear of rejection or commitment, dependence, breakups and infidelity. For some of these, couples counselling or therapy fits better than coaching.
Shallow and harmful relationships
You have many contacts but few where you feel truly at ease. Some relationships cost you more energy than they give.
Emotional infidelity
You have been betrayed, or you have grown closer to someone else than your relationship allows. Trust and your sense of yourself are shaken.
Intense dependence on a partner
Your day, your mood and your self-worth revolve almost entirely around the other person. Without them you feel lost, and the fear of losing them is always there.
If a relationship dominates you so much that you suffer, a licensed psychotherapist is the right person to see. If the relationship involves control or violence, contact a service against violence.
Losing a sense of what real love is
Between films, social media, family expectations and your own disappointments, you no longer know what love really means to you.
Difficulty building healthy relationships
Friendships or relationships keep ending in similar ways, or never get started. You wonder what you could do differently.
Pressure of expectations around marriage or engagement
When will you marry, whom, how big will the celebration be, what needs to be in place? Many people have expectations, and yours easily get lost among them.
Fear of commitment
As soon as a relationship, a job or a decision becomes binding, you want to pull back. Freedom feels safer than commitment.
Digital infidelity (on social media)
Secret chats, likes, contact with exes: online, it quickly becomes unclear where infidelity begins, and that is exactly where mistrust and arguments start.
Isolation after a relationship ends
After a breakup you withdraw, shared friends are gone, and everyday life feels empty. It is hard to find your feet again.
Emotional dependence on one person
You can't break away from one person, even if the relationship harms you or is already over. Your thoughts, feelings and decisions circle around them.
A licensed psychotherapist is the right person to see if you notice you can't break free on your own. In cases of control, threats or violence, services against violence can help.
Life online
Phone, social media and gaming: distraction, constant comparison, cyberbullying and the feeling of living more online than offline.
Social media overuse
You reach for your phone without noticing, and five minutes turn into an hour. Afterwards you feel emptier rather than relaxed.
Constant comparison online
Online, everyone looks more successful, more attractive and happier. You know these are selected snapshots and still feel worse.
Losing time and productivity to your phone
You plan a lot, but notifications, videos and chats cut your day into pieces. By evening you have no time left for what mattered to you.
Cyberbullying
You are being insulted, exposed or threatened online, or images of you are being shared. It doesn't stop at your front door and can weigh very heavily.
Save evidence with screenshots, report the content to the platform and talk to someone you trust. In cases of threats, blackmail or intimate images, contact the police and a service for people affected by online abuse.
Escaping reality into the virtual world
Online, a lot feels easier than in real life: recognition, contacts, success. Real life gets left behind.
Weak face-to-face communication
In chats a lot comes easily, but face to face, on the phone or in a group you get unsure and don't know what to say.
Gaming addiction
You play for longer than you want to, and other things fade into the background: sleep, study, work, friends. Stopping is hard, even when you intend to.
If you can no longer control your gaming despite negative consequences, contact an addiction counselling service. Many also advise on gaming, often free of charge and confidentially.
Feeling scattered by information overload
Podcasts, articles, courses, advice: you take in new things all the time, but little clarity comes from it and even less action.
Presenting an idealised version of yourself
Online and offline you mainly show your best side. It takes energy, and sometimes you feel no one really knows you.
Weak listening skills
While others are talking, your mind is already on your answer or somewhere else entirely. People then don't feel heard, and misunderstandings pile up.
Society and culture
Unequal opportunities, tradition, nepotism or low trust in institutions: issues bigger than any one person. Coaching cannot solve them, though it can help you see what is in your hands.
Lack of social justice
You see that opportunities are unequally distributed, by background, money or connections. It makes you angry and sometimes disheartened.
Few economic opportunities
Good jobs are scarce, wages low, rents high. Even with a degree, a secure life seems hard to reach.
Gap between religious values and everyday reality
What you believe and what your daily life demands don't always fit together, for example at work, at university or among friends. That can be unsettling.
Pressure of customs and traditions on personal freedom
Your community's expectations about how to live, dress, work or marry limit your choices. You want to belong and still be yourself.
Lack of safe spaces for expression
There are few places where you can say honestly what you think or feel without fearing consequences or judgement.
Stigma around psychotherapy
In many families and cultures, psychotherapy is seen as weakness or shame. So people who need help often seek it late or not at all.
Class discrimination and nepotism (wasta)
Jobs and opportunities go to those who know someone, not to those who fit best. Merit alone doesn't seem to be enough.
Low trust in public institutions
Offices, schools, authorities: you have experienced them not helping or not taking you seriously. So you don't turn to them even when you could.
Marginalisation or political frustration
You feel that your voice doesn't count and decisions are made over your head.
Lack of successful young role models
You see few people of your age and in your situation who have taken a path you could imagine for yourself.
Meaning and spirituality
Questions of meaning, faith, belonging and inner peace. For religious and existential questions, other people are often better placed to help than a coach.
Loss of meaning or purpose in life
You get through everyday life, but the question of what it is all for won't let go. Goals other people have feel empty to you.
A weakened relationship with God or spiritual guilt
You feel further from your faith than before, or feel you are not living up to it. That weighs on you.
Fear of death or the unknown
Thoughts of death, illness or an uncertain future keep coming back and frighten you.
Feeling lost and not belonging
You don't feel fully at home anywhere: not in your family, not among friends, sometimes not in the country you live in.
Conflict between religion and science, or values and reality
What you were taught and what you read or experience today seem to contradict each other. You are looking for a stance that takes both seriously.
Deep existential questions: why am I here?
Questions about the meaning of life, your place in the world or what comes after are very much on your mind.
Frustration with injustice in the world
News of wars, poverty and injustice leaves you angry, sad or powerless.
Difficulty finding inner peace
Even in quiet moments you feel restless inside. You long for calm and don't know where to begin.
Missing real spirituality amid the noise of life
Between appointments, screens and expectations there is hardly any room for silence, prayer or reflection, and you miss it.
Feeling that nothing has any taste anymore
Things that used to bring you joy leave you cold. Everything seems grey and indifferent.
If you have hardly felt any joy or interest for more than two weeks, talk to a doctor or a licensed psychotherapist. It can be a sign of depression, which is treatable. If you are thinking about suicide, call the emergency services right away.
Who helps with what?
Coaching
For decisions, career direction, communication and personal development. It looks forward, at concrete situations and next steps.
Counselling services
For life questions, family, study, debt, addiction or violence. Often free and confidential. Many universities have their own psychological counselling.
Psychotherapy and medical help
For lasting anxiety, low mood, sleep problems, painful experiences or addiction. A first step can be your family doctor.
Legal and specialist advice, emergencies
For employment law, residence, discrimination or coercion. In acute danger, always: emergency services or the police.
Frequently asked questions
Is this page a diagnosis?
No. The descriptions show how a topic can feel. Whether there is an illness can only be judged by a doctor or a licensed psychotherapist.
Is coaching the same as psychotherapy?
No. Coaching looks forward, at decisions, direction and development. It does not treat mental illness and does not replace therapy. When a concern belongs there, I say so openly.
Who is this page for?
For young adults aged 18 and over, whatever their background, language or culture. My coaching is for adults.
Where does the list come from?
It is a collection of topics that often occupy young adults. It is not a scientific classification and does not claim to be complete.
Does the page record which topics I read?
There is no form and no test on this page, and you are not asked about your topics. How the website handles data in general is explained in the privacy policy.
What does coaching cost?
It depends on the concern and the number of sessions. We talk about it in the free 20-minute intro call, with no obligation.
Not sure whether coaching fits what you are dealing with?
We can work that out together in a free 20-minute intro call. If other help fits better, I will tell you.