ONLINE THERAPY FOR
YOUNG CAREGIVERS
EXPERTISE + COMPASSION
Virtual Therapy for Young Caregivers Therapy in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia
Virtual Therapy for Young Caregivers Therapy in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
At It's Not Wednesday, we offer online therapy for young adults navigating caregiving responsibilities while trying to build their own lives. Caring for a parent or loved one with illness or disability at a young age can bring pressures and emotional experiences that many peers do not fully understand.
Therapy offers a space where your experience is recognized and you can process the unique challenges of being both a caregiver and someone still shaping your own future.
THE REALITY OF BEING A YOUNG CAREGIVER
Becoming a caregiver early in life can shift your sense of independence, identity, and direction. You may feel caught between wanting to build your own life and feeling responsible for someone you love. While friends are focused on careers, relationships, or travel, your life may include hospital visits, medical decisions, and emotional responsibility that others rarely see.
YOU MAY RECOGNIZE YOURSELF HERE
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+You feel older than your peers because of the responsibilities you carry
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+You feel torn between your independence and your caregiving role
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+You feel guilt when focusing on your own life or future
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+You struggle to talk about your experience with friends who may not understand
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+You are navigating anticipatory grief while still trying to live your life
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+You feel emotionally exhausted or overwhelmed
IN SESSION
How Therapy Can Support Young Caregivers
Caring for a parent, sibling, grandparent, or partner at a young age changes things. While friends are focused on school, careers, relationships, or figuring out their own lives, you're managing appointments, medications, hard conversations, and responsibilities most people your age have never had to think about.
Young caregivers often carry a complex mix of emotions - love, responsibility, grief, pressure, and uncertainty about the future. It can be isolating, especially when the people around you don't quite understand what your day-to-day actually involves.
Therapy offers a place to process these experiences while helping you develop steadier ways of navigating both caregiving and your own life. Your role matters. So does your life outside of it.
WHAT WE’LL WORK ON
ACT
MAKING SPACE FOR DIFFICULT EMOTIONS
Caregiving at a young age can bring feelings that are hard to admit. Resentment about what you've had to give up, guilt for wanting your own life, grief for the relationship you expected to have. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps you acknowledge and make room for these emotions without feeling defined by them, while staying connected to the future you're still building.
DBT
TOOLS FOR EMOTIONAL OVERWHELM AND STRESS
Balancing caregiving with school, work, or the early years of a career can leave you stretched thin. Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) provides practical tools for:
Regulating emotions when you're running on empty
Setting boundaries with family, without the guilt spiral
Managing stress in the moments that ask the most of you
IFS
UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF YOU
Young caregivers often feel pulled between roles.
One part responsible, holding it all together. One part longing for independence and a life of your own. One part grieving, quietly, in the background.
Parts-based therapy helps you explore these internal tensions with compassion and clarity.
EXISTENTIAL THERAPY
NAVIGATING IDENTITY AND THE FUTURE
Caregiving young can blur the picture of who you are and where you're headed. Plans get put on hold. Milestones look different than you imagined. Existential therapy creates space to explore questions about identity, purpose, and how caregiving fits into the life you are still building - not as a detour from your future, but as part of a life that's still yours to shape.