In this short video, I explain why feeling lost in your twenties says little about your worth, and how we use our sessions to find a direction you can trust.
You can also send me an email
Online therapy for young men helps men in their twenties and early thirties who feel stuck, behind or unsure what kind of man they are turning into. We meet one to one by video, in English, for 1-hour sessions with 50 minutes of therapy, at a time that works in your time zone, wherever you are studying, working or living.
I help you understand what holds you back, tell other people’s expectations apart from your own and build the habits and confidence of an adult life that fits you. This page is part of my online psychotherapy for men. Online psychotherapy for young adults covers this stage of life for everyone, while this page is about becoming a man within it.
Your options: ask for a free 30-minute call, book a first session, look at my client policy or send me a message.
Online therapy for young men is for men from their early twenties who feel that adult life has started without them. You might be studying, between jobs or in your first proper role, in your home country or far from it, and it does not feel the way you were told it would. You want straight talk and a clearer idea of where you are heading.
Some young men need a page that goes further into one theme. If one of these lines fits you better, the link will help more.
You can also send me an email
These reviews describe clients’ experiences of working with me. They come from my wider practice and do not all relate to online sessions. Each person’s experience is their own, and a review does not promise a particular outcome.
“In more than two decades of sitting with people, I have met many young men who are sharp, capable and privately sure that everyone else got instructions they were never given. I do not believe their trouble is laziness or a lack of feeling. It is that so few older men have been honest with them. Behind the late nights and the endless scrolling I hear ‘Am I falling behind, and will anyone wait for me?’ Right next to it is ‘Leave me, I will figure it out on my own.’ Both are understandable at 24. What helps is not another video of advice. It is an older voice that takes you seriously, tells you the truth and expects something from you.”
Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist and EFT couples therapist
I am Mark Colclough, MA. I have practised since 2004 and offer online psychotherapy and couples therapy in English.
My training brings together your emotions, your thoughts and your relationships. My deep passion is the moment when what happens between you finally makes sense, to each of you and to each other. I have lived and worked in nine countries, so I know something of life across languages, cultures and borders.
Read about my background, or explore online psychotherapy and online couples therapy.
I meet regularly with experienced psychotherapists to reflect on my work, question my understanding and develop my skills. Supervision is part of the professional care I bring to individual and couples work, including online sessions.
My focus is thoughtful practice, integrity and responsibility.
You are welcome to ask about the kind of support you need.
Tell me where you are based and your time zone. We can then consider whether online sessions together are suitable.
Gabriel is 25 and moved back into his parents’ flat in Lisbon after finishing a design degree in London. He works shifts in a café, sends out portfolios that nobody answers and games with old university friends until the early hours. The gym at 7 is the only fixed point in his week. He has been seeing someone for 4 months and has started to go quiet on her. To his friends he calls it a gap year.
I would begin with the distance between the gap-year story and how Gabriel’s days really look. In a first video session he would probably notice that he is less lost than he fears and much more alone with it than anyone knows. Then we would pick one concrete step for the next week.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have tried to push through on your own, and the feeling of being stuck has only grown.
You do not need a crisis, a diagnosis or a polished explanation to work with me. A steady sense that you are drifting, that your days have no shape or that you hide how you feel from everyone is enough. Over 22 years of practice I have learned to tell the normal turbulence of your twenties from a pattern that needs proper attention.
My professional view is that the earlier you look at it, the less it settles into how you see yourself. I will help you work out what is going on and what has to change. These 6 questions can help you decide whether now is the moment.
If they have, take it seriously. With no lectures, deadlines or manager, many young men slide. Bedtime creeps later, you wake at midday, and the laptop you opened to apply for jobs ends up showing football highlights.
I would look at what used to hold your days together and what has taken its place. That tells us whether this is a rough patch or a pattern that needs work. If it sounds familiar, book a session with me and we will start from your actual week.
Most young men want both, and the 2 wishes tug against each other. You moved out, perhaps to another country, to make your own choices. Yet one remark from your father about your plans can ruin your week, and you still check how a decision will look back home.
I do not see your need for approval as weak or your independence as arrogance. I help you understand what each side is protecting, so you can stay close to your family without living by their script.
For many young men it does, and they rarely admit it. You send something, watch it get read and wait. You go back over what you wrote and check the phone again and again. When a match stops replying, it can feel like proof that you are not enough.
Wanting to be chosen is human, and I will not laugh at it. I help you notice how quickly the alarm sounds and which older fear it touches, often a feeling that you have to earn your place. Then we practise saying what you want in plain words.
That pattern is common at your age, and it can leave you puzzled about yourself. You pursue someone, the dates go well, and when they want to meet your friends or give it a name, something in you goes cold.
I help you slow it down and find the moment when wanting closeness turns into wanting out, often from a fear of being trapped or found out. I respect that fear. I will also ask you to stop leaving people confused when you could be honest with them.
Plenty of young men cope by switching off. When a friend wants a real conversation, a girlfriend is upset or the future feels too big, the headphones go on, another match starts, or you train until your head goes quiet. Month after month the difficult conversations wait, and eventually nobody bothers to start them.
I have nothing against games, training or time alone. Together we look at what the switching off spares you from feeling. Then the gym and the console become things you pick, not places you hide.
Many young men do not, and that is not a defect. You have been told to be strong yet sensitive, ambitious yet relaxed, independent yet always reachable. So you borrow a personality from someone online, or you stop trying and settle for being vague.
In “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover”, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette set out a difference between the psychology of a boy and the psychology of a man. I find it a useful lens, not a rulebook: it helps you see which parts of you are still waiting for permission to grow up. What kind of man you become remains your choice.
If one of these questions landed, ask for a free call to hear how I work, or book a session and make a start.
You can also send me an email
Tell me briefly what kind of support you are looking for.
Include your country and time zone so we can discuss whether online work together is possible and find a suitable time.
You do not need to explain your whole story in your first message.
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Understanding yourself is a beginning, and the work has to show up in your mornings, your relationships and your choices.
Working with me will help you understand why you feel stuck, see the habits and beliefs that keep you there and make changes you notice in daily life. Insight on its own will not get you up at 8 or make you send the difficult message.
I am an active therapist. You get my honest reading, small tasks to try and a challenge whenever an excuse is doing your thinking. Since 2010 I have studied men’s work, and what I have learned there adds to and deepens my psychotherapy training. These 6 questions describe what we work towards.
Related reading: Why am I so unhappy studying abroad when I wanted this? and When did I stop knowing what I want?.
I help you separate the real problem from the noise around it. The gaming into the small hours, the heavy weekends and the comparing all matter, yet mostly they point at something else. Underneath there is often something more exact: a fear of letting your parents down, a belief that only an exceptional man is worth anything, or grief for a home or a version of life you left behind.
I will tell you what I think is going on and what to tackle first. Whenever you want to begin, book a session with me and we start sorting it.
You can learn to catch it early. A lost week tends to start small: skipping the morning run, a late night that becomes a late morning, a message left unanswered because it feels too heavy. Notice that first step and you can still turn round.
Together we list your personal warning signs and ask what each one helps you dodge. Then we agree on a concrete counter-move, and you try it that same week. Seeing the slide only helps if you also practise climbing out of it.
Calming down does not mean pretending your future does not matter. It means getting steady enough to think, so the panic stops making your decisions. Much of the pressure comes from measuring your inside against everyone else’s highlights.
I help you notice the pressure in your body before it turns into freezing, and find simple ways of settling it that you will actually use. Practice between sessions is your part of the job: a few minutes a day, every day, does more than any single conversation with me.
It starts with knowing what you want, which is hard after years of working out what other people want from you. A lot of young men decided early that the agreeable, helpful guy is the one nobody rejects. So you agree, make a joke, go along with it and later feel quietly used.
Robert Glover’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” describes men who hide their needs to win approval, and the unspoken deals that follow. With that picture in mind, we catch the moments when you are keeping someone happy instead of telling them something. We rehearse real conversations until you can say what you want and still feel decent about yourself.
Certainty rarely arrives first. Choices get clearer when you separate what you fear, what you owe and what you were told to want from what actually draws you.
I help you weigh the real options, what each would demand and what you would learn by trying. I will give you my view and point it out when you are hiding behind endless research. The decision stays yours. If the question is mainly what being a man means to you, online masculinity and identity therapy goes further.
It takes change that shows from the outside: a rhythm to your days, work that makes some sense to you, friendships where you can be honest and relationships you do not run from.
We work out together what has to shift and what is already sound in you. Your sensitivity, your humour and your doubts are not the problem. The aim is a life in which your choices follow your own values, and in which you feel like a man rather than a boy waiting to be given permission.
You can also send me an email
You do not need to know what is wrong or how to put it. We start from how your life looks this month.
When you start, I listen, help you name what is hardest and give our work a clear focus early. A diagnosis or a well-rehearsed story is not required.
This work is a focused form of my online psychotherapy, individual sessions on your inner life and your relationships. If a relationship is at the centre and your partner wants to take part, online couples therapy gives you long-term relational development and healing together. When you already know you want a steady run of sessions, therapy discounts and bundles lower the price of each one and give you a plan to hold on to.
I ask what made you get in touch now, what an ordinary week looks like, what you have tried and what you would like to change. We do not have to begin with your childhood.
At the end of the hour you hear my first read and a proposal for how we might go on. Then you decide whether it feels right. If talking first suits you better, book a free 30-minute call.
Individual work fits when the focus is you: your direction, your confidence, your habits, your family story and how you handle friendships and dating. We can talk about the people in your life without any of them on the call.
In individual sessions I keep hold of the thread from week to week and hold you to what you said you wanted. For how I work with adults of every age, online psychotherapy describes my individual practice as a whole.
Couples therapy is the better route when your relationship itself needs ongoing work: the same fights, broken trust, or a pattern where one of you chases and the other hides.
With both of you on screen, I help you spot the loop you get caught in, take responsibility for your side of it and find safer ways to be close. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing, not a referee for a single argument.
That depends on how stuck you feel, how much room your life has and how much continuity the work needs. When your days have lost their shape, a fixed appointment is an anchor in itself.
My usual advice is to meet every week at first and move to fortnightly when things are rolling. I will tell you if we meet too rarely to build anything, or when it is time to space things out.
A bundle is right when you already know you want a run of sessions and would rather not decide every week whether to come back. On a tight budget, that weekly decision easily becomes the reason to stop just as things begin to move.
A bundle saves money and gives you the safety of a structured plan, and I will help you judge whether one fits. Look at therapy discounts and bundles to compare them.
The work is done when you own more of your life, have a direction you trust and feel less need to escape from it. Bad weeks will still come, but they will not knock you off course for months.
I review progress with you openly, and I have no interest in keeping you in therapy longer than you need. We can space sessions out, pause or stop. Coming back in a few years at a new crossroads is good sense, not failure.
Wondering whether this is the right place to begin? Here is how it sits beside the pages closest to it.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online therapy for young men (this page) | You are in your twenties or early thirties and feel stuck, behind or unsure who you are becoming. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions to begin |
| Online psychotherapy for young adults | You want help with this stage of life without a particular focus on being a man. | 1-hour video sessions, weekly or fortnightly |
| Online therapy for lonely men | Being cut off from friends is the main thing you want to change. | A steady course of video sessions |
| Online masculinity and identity therapy | Questions about what being a man means to you are at the centre. | Weekly or every second week by video |
It is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for men in their twenties and early thirties who feel lost, stuck or unsure of themselves while building an adult life. You can join from wherever you live or study.
The work goes deep, into the whole of you and the family patterns you bring, while staying practical. It sits within my online psychotherapy for men, with a focus on the years in which you become the man you will be.
Come when the drifting, the worry or the hiding has gone on for a few months, or when you notice you avoid people and plans you used to want. Your own sense that something is off counts.
In 22 years as a therapist I have seen how much easier it is to change a pattern at 24 than at 44. I look at how long it has lasted, what it costs you and whether it is spreading into new parts of your life.
Yes. Feeling lost is one of the commonest reasons young men contact me, and it is workable. I cannot give you a purpose, but I can help you find out what you want and move towards it.
In my clinical experience, feeling behind usually rests on a comparison with an imagined version of everyone else. Once we look at your own values and your real circumstances, the next step tends to be clearer than you expected.
It is enough to try one session. Plenty of young men first book because someone who cares about them gave a push. The work becomes useful once you find your own reason, and that often happens in the first hour.
I will ask what they are worried about and what you make of it. Whatever they hope for, what we talk about stays between you and me.
Both moves protect you from feeling not good enough. Impressing people keeps rejection away for a while, but keeping up the act is exhausting, so you cancel and stay in. It is a way of coping you picked up somewhere, not a flaw in who you are.
I help you see which move you make with whom, and what it costs you in real friendships. Then we practise something in between: turning up as yourself, a bit less polished and a lot more present.
We look at your present life: the hardest part, an ordinary Tuesday and what you hope will be different by this time next year. A few questions go to your family and the place you grew up. Before we stop, you get my early impressions and a focus to try.
You do not need to prepare a speech. Book your first session once you feel ready, or begin with a free call.
Plan on around 3 months of weekly or fortnightly sessions as a first stretch. In that time most men give their days a shape again and begin to see what sits under the drift. Deeper themes take longer.
Drawing on 22 years of practice, I prefer a clear first stretch with an honest review to open-ended sessions without direction. At that review you choose with me how to go on.
Yes. Video is made for that. Many young men start sessions in one city and carry on from a parents’ house, a new job or another country, without losing the thread. The calendar always shows times in your local time zone.
Bring headphones, a decent connection and a door you can close. If you share a flat with thin walls, a booked study room or a walk to a quiet spot works better than the kitchen. If adjusting to life abroad is the main struggle, online therapy for expat men may suit you better.
Sessions are booked as 1-hour online appointments, and each one holds 50 minutes of therapy. The fee as it stands today, in US dollars, is on my prices page.
Booking a run of sessions as a bundle takes 10 per cent off and gives you a fixed plan, which helps on a student or starter budget. The details are on therapy discounts and bundles.
The quickest way is to book a session online. If you want to check first that I am the right person, request a free 30-minute call.
If no time works, or something feels urgent, send me a message. I keep space for acute situations, usually within days, which acute online psychotherapy explains. Choose a time, and let us get to work.
You can also send me an email
I want therapy to help you understand your experience and make choices you can use in everyday life. We pay attention to feelings, needs and the responses that happen before you have time to think.
Our online room should offer enough trust and honesty to explore what is difficult. I bring attention and professional judgement. You bring your experience, questions and the right to say when something does not fit.
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P.S. I’ll call you in a bit!
