Therapy for College & Graduate Students in Chicago

College and graduate school can be exciting—and also overwhelming, lonely, stressful, and exhausting. Whether you’re struggling with anxiety, academic pressure, relationships, ADHD, perfectionism, burnout, identity, or simply figuring out who you are and what comes next, therapy can give you a space that’s entirely yours.

In-network with UnitedHealthcare, BCBS PPO, and Aetna

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College Can Be Harder Than It Looks

Maybe you’re doing well on paper but feel overwhelmed underneath it all. Or maybe school, relationships, your mental health, or simply taking care of yourself have become harder to manage than you expected.

You might be:

  • Feeling anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, or burned out

  • Struggling to focus, procrastinating, or falling behind academically

  • Putting enormous pressure on yourself to succeed

  • Comparing yourself to classmates and wondering if you’re good enough

  • Navigating ADHD or executive functioning challenges

  • Going through a breakup, friendship conflict, or difficult relationship

  • Feeling lonely or struggling to find your people

  • Trying to balance school with work, finances, family, or other responsibilities

  • Exploring your identity, sexuality, culture, values, or what you actually want for yourself

  • Worried about graduation, your career, or what comes next

  • Finding that the coping strategies that used to work aren’t working anymore

You don’t have to wait until you’re failing classes or in crisis to ask for support. Therapy can help you navigate what’s happening now while building skills and self-understanding that can stay with you long after graduation.

Specialties

  • A woman with glasses biting a yellow pencil, sitting at a desk with a laptop, colorful pens in a cup, and a blue notebook.

    Academic Stress & Burnout

    The pressure to succeed can make school feel relentless. Therapy can help you manage stress, set realistic expectations, and make room for yourself outside of academics.

  • Anxiety & Depression

    College and graduate school can intensify anxiety, depression, loneliness, and self-doubt. You don’t have to navigate those feelings alone.

  • A woman with dark, wavy hair and makeup holding a book close to her face, with only her eyes visible over the cover, looking at the camera.

    ADHD or Difficulty Focusing

    Difficulty focusing, starting assignments, managing time, or staying organized can make student life especially challenging.

  • student writing

    Perfectionism & Imposter Syndrome

    If achievement never feels like enough—or you’re waiting for everyone to realize you don’t belong—therapy can help you challenge the pressure to constantly prove yourself.

  • two people on a date

    Relationships & Dating

    Friendships, dating, breakups, roommates, family relationships, and changing social circles can all become important parts of therapy.

  • Group of five young people sitting together outdoors, smiling and having fun on a sunny day.

    Identity & Self-Discovery

    College can bring questions about who you are, what you value, where you belong, and how you want to live your life.

  • woman with graduation cap looking at an audience

    Life & Career Transitions

    Changing majors, graduating, applying to graduate school, starting a career, or simply wondering what comes next? can bring excitement and uncertainty.

  • woman smelling flowers

    Stress, Coping & Self-Care

    Therapy can help you develop healthier ways of coping with stress while making space for rest, relationships, and the parts of life that matter outside of school.

Therapy for Undergraduate Students

Starting college can mean navigating independence, new relationships, academic expectations, and questions about who you are—all at the same time. And even after you’ve adjusted to college life, the pressure of balancing classes, friendships, work, family, finances, and your mental health can become exhausting.

Some students struggle with loneliness or homesickness. Others find themselves dealing with anxiety, depression, ADHD, perfectionism, relationship difficulties, family expectations, or uncertainty about their future. You may be thriving academically while struggling personally—or having a difficult semester and wondering how to get back on track.

Therapy gives you a confidential space outside of your academic and social world where you can be honest about how you’re actually doing.

Therapy for Law Students

Law students tend to face a unique set of challenges to their mental health and well being. The academic pressure alone, with the case method and heavy reading loads, can be an overwhelming burden. Then there’s often a grading curve as well as class rankings that add to an already competitive environment. It can be difficult for law students to make friends with the peers given the level of competitiveness within their program. The academic structure can easily lead to imposter syndrome and unhealthy levels of pressure to succeed. Upon graduation, the competition can pick up even more, with limited number of positions at the most prestigious firms. Students may at times feel insecure about whether their investment will pay off, both financially, and in the quality of life that they desire.

Given these factors, it’s often difficult for law students to prioritize their mental health. Stigma around admitting to mental health related challenges as a law student continues to be rampant. Law students may not feel like they can take the time to prioritize their mental health, or that doing so might signal that they are incapable of meeting the pressures of law school. We understand these challenges, and how hard it can be to take the first step to schedule therapy for yourself as a law student.

A healthcare professional checking a woman's blood pressure in a medical setting, with another person observing.

Therapy for Medical Students and Residents

Our future physicians, much needed in society, don’t have the easiest time managing all of their needs in medical school and residency. Medical students are required to absorb and retain a vast amount of information, alongside of high expectations to perform well on assessments and think critically. There is also a transition from classroom to clinic, where medical students and residents have long hours, lots of responsibility, and regularly encounter severe illness and death. Long shifts with lack of sleep are still the norm, which further exacerbates the already existing stress of the role. This can of course take a huge toll on future physicians mental health. Burnout and struggles with anxiety and/or depression are common, alongside of stigma around getting help.

Similar to other industries, medical students and residents coming from diverse cultural backgrounds, or perhaps from schools abroad, may face additional challenges with discrimination, bias, or feel like their unique voice is not represented. Medical students also face the possibility of needing to move to a different area for residency, which adds an additional layer of being uprooted whether or not this is a welcome change.

One of the best things that medical students and residents can do is to take care of their own health, including mental health. This will help to build their resilience and be able to provide the best care for their patients. We know, though, that this way of thinking is not common, so it may be quite difficult to ask for help.

Therapy for Psychology and Counseling Graduate Students

Students in clinical and counseling psychology programs at the masters and doctoral levels can face complex challenges that make them more aware of their own growth edges - whether or this feels welcome. Emotional and psychological demands for these students run high, whether it be due to vicarious trauma, self-reflection required as part of the program, and managing person issues, especially when similar to the clients with whom they are working. Graduate students in the psychology world are also integrating theory and practice in a way that is likely different from college. They may also be working with clients with complex issues while also under supervision of a supervisor who may have a different style or approach. There are boundaries to navigate and set, and ethical dilemmas to work through such as confidentiality and mandated reporting.

Throughout their training, graduate students in counseling and mental health are developing their identity, as well as navigating their own personal growth and self-doubt. Imposter syndrome is also common, especially in their work with clients. They may be receiving criticism from supervisors and/or navigating power dynamics and differences in the supervisory relationship. Their program may also place importance for them to work with their implicit biases and prejudices, which can be uncomfortable and challenging. With such diverse demands, burnout prevention and self care is highly important. Therapy can play a key role in supporting all of these areas of overlap in professional and personal growth.

Is Therapy Worth It If I’m “Just Stressed”?

You don’t have to be in crisis to benefit from therapy. You might still be going to class, turning in assignments, showing up for work, spending time with friends, and doing everything you’re “supposed” to be doing—and still feel anxious, exhausted, lonely, overwhelmed, or unsure of yourself underneath it all.

Therapy gives you a place to talk honestly about what’s going on without worrying about grades, disappointing someone, burdening your friends, or proving that your problems are serious enough.

Sometimes therapy is about getting through a particularly difficult period. Sometimes it’s about understanding yourself better, changing patterns that keep repeating, or figuring out how you actually want your life to feel.

You don’t have to wait until things get worse to start feeling better.

How Therapy for College & Graduate Students Can Help

Therapy isn’t about telling you how to do college “better.” It’s a space to understand what’s making things difficult, develop strategies that work for you, and make decisions based on who you are rather than who you think you’re supposed to be.

Depending on what brings you to therapy, you might work on:

  • Managing anxiety, depression, stress, or burnout

  • Developing strategies for ADHD, procrastination, or difficulty focusing

  • Challenging perfectionism and all-or-nothing thinking

  • Building confidence and trusting yourself

  • Navigating relationships, breakups, friendships, and family dynamics

  • Setting boundaries with parents, professors, supervisors, or others

  • Exploring identity, culture, sexuality, and belonging

  • Coping with academic or career uncertainty

  • Developing healthier ways to manage stress

  • Creating a life that has room for more than achievement

You and your therapist can decide together what would make therapy most useful for you.

Finding a Therapist Who Gets Student Life

The right therapist can give you a space separate from professors, parents, supervisors, classmates, partners, and friends—a relationship where the focus gets to be on you.

Balanced Awakening has therapists who enjoy working with undergraduate, graduate, and professional students navigating everything from anxiety and academic stress to relationships, identity, ADHD, burnout, and major life decisions.

Explore our student therapists above to find someone who feels like a good fit, or schedule an appointment to get started.

Counseling for Students FAQs

  • Anything that is affecting your mental health, relationships, academic life, or overall well-being is worth talking about. Students often come to therapy for anxiety, depression, academic stress, burnout, ADHD or difficulty focusing, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, relationships and breakups, family concerns, loneliness, identity, substance use, or uncertainty about their future.

    You don’t need to know exactly what you want to work on before starting therapy. You and your therapist can figure that out together.

  • Not at all. Many students who come to therapy are doing well academically while struggling in other parts of their lives.

    You might be getting good grades while feeling anxious, burned out, lonely, overwhelmed, unhappy in a relationship, unsure of yourself, or under constant pressure to succeed. Therapy can be helpful even when everything looks fine from the outside.

  • Yes. College and graduate school can create an environment where there is always another assignment, exam, application, clinical rotation, deadline, or achievement to work toward.

    Therapy can help you understand the expectations you place on yourself, challenge perfectionistic or all-or-nothing thinking, develop healthier ways of coping with stress, set boundaries, and create more room for rest and life outside of school.

  • Yes. Therapy can help students who struggle with ADHD, procrastination, organization, time management, motivation, or executive functioning.

    Your therapist can help you better understand the patterns that make school difficult and develop strategies that work with the way your brain functions. Therapy can also address the anxiety, shame, perfectionism, or low self-confidence that sometimes develops after years of struggling to keep up.

  • Yes! We offer virtual student therapy sessions as well as in-person. Sometimes it’s easier for clients to engage in therapy virtually, especially when they are busy students!

  • Yes. Our therapists work with undergraduate and graduate students, including students in demanding professional and clinical programs.

    We understand that law students, medical students and residents, and psychology and counseling graduate studentscan face pressures that are specific to their training—from competition and demanding workloads to clinical responsibility, supervision, imposter syndrome, burnout, and uncertainty about their careers.

    I would definitely include this one since you deliberately kept those three sections. It ties the FAQ schema/content back to one of this page’s real differentiators.

  • We offer virtual therapy, but where you are physically located at the time of your appointment matters because therapists must follow state licensing requirements.

    Our Illinois therapists can provide telehealth to clients who are physically located in Illinois at the time of their session. If you attend college outside Illinois, ask us about your situation and we can help you determine what options are available.

  • Our student therapy rate for the first two sessions is $250. After that, 55 minute sessions are $225.

    Most of our therapists are in network with United Healthcare/Optum, BCBS PPO and Aetna insurance.

What Our Clients Are Saying

  • During our first session Hannah was proactive in creating a plan of action to properly diagnose me and address my concerns. Detailed. Office is beautiful. Love the decor, relaxing ambiance and free tea.

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  • She was very kind and thorough during intake and the entire office looks like something out of a lifestyle magazine.

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  • The office is lovely and welcoming, the in-take paperwork helped me prepare for what I wanted to talk about and gave me a starting point.

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  • Dr. Yang is warm and empathic, and made me feel comfortable from the very beginning.

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  • Emma has been very supportive through major life changes for me. Her sweet and gentle nature made it easy for me to feel safe to open up to her. I am very grateful for her support and kindness.

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  • It was my first visit and she made me feel so safe. I opened up right away!

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Contact Us 
Balanced Awakening Lakeview
4043 N Ravenswood Ave, Ste 301
Chicago, IL 60613
  
Balanced Awakening Andersonville
5215 N Ravenswood Ave, Ste 201 & 208
Chicago, IL 60640
  
Balanced Awakening Loop
25 E Washington St, Ste 1505
Chicago, IL 60602
  
Balanced Awakening Lincoln Park
561 W Diversey, Ste 205
Chicago, IL 60614