299 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 3 Counselors can assist clients with feelings of distress regarding self-discovery, identity, and fitting in by normalizing these developmental experiences and processing their values and life desires. Regarding transitions, counselors should be intentional to assure that the counseling session is a safe and stable environment for emerging adult clients. Given the stress and instability during emerging adulthood from frequently changing contexts in college, jobs, families, friends, romantic partnerships, and living situations, assuring that the counseling session remains stable and safe can provide clients with a sense of ease and security that they may be lacking in other areas of their lives. Addressing dating and attachment in emerging adulthood can prove to be a difficult task, as some emerging adults may be seeking monogamous relationships while others may be more interested in hooking up or casual, no-strings-attached sexual encounters that are increasingly common during emerging adulthood (Stinson, 2010). Meeting clients where they are in terms of dating can be beneficial to supporting them in their specific needs. Given the relationship between dating and self-worth (Park et al., 2011), counselors may benefit from counseling modalities such as cognitive behavioral therapy to assist clients with cognitive distortions and feelings surrounding dating and their worth. Regarding attachment, counselors can consider using attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) with emerging adult clients struggling with their attachment types in romantic relationships. Lastly, findings demonstrated that counselors encounter unique developmental issues when counseling emerging adult clients. It may be beneficial for counselors to be instructed on these unique needs of emerging adult clients during their counselor education programs, given the vulnerability of this age group to mental health difficulties, and the needs that participants reported (Cheng et al., 2015). Counselor educators can implement case studies surrounding emerging adult clients struggling with parental pressures, self-discovery, transitions, and dating and attachment to prepare them for real-world scenarios that they are likely to encounter while working with this population. Information on Erikson’s (1968) stages of development, specifically aspects of identity achievement versus role confusion, can align with instruction on emerging adulthood. Counselor educators should also acknowledge that the majority of counselors-in-training may be within the emerging adulthood age range and consider developmental implications for these students during instruction and mentorship (Nice & Branthoover, 2024). The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP; 2023) standards highlight lifespan development as a foundational counseling curriculum, with lifespan development standards addressing: “1. theories of individual and family development across the lifespan” and “7. models of resilience, optimal development, and wellness in individuals and families across the lifespan.” Counselor education should include training on the unique developmental needs and issues of emerging adulthood such as the themes found within this study in order to assist in meeting these standards. Limitations and Future Research Given the subjective nature of qualitative research, we implemented multiple measures of trustworthiness to account for our influence and positionality on this study. Regardless, our influence should still be considered a limitation of this study (Hays et al., 2016). Although we limited the total number of professional counselors working in college counseling centers to less than half of the total sample (n = 5), those participants only experienced emerging adults within the college context and could not speak to experiences of counseling emerging adults who have never attended college, an understudied population of young adults (Seiffge-Krenke et al., 2013). The semi-structured
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