what is Second Adolescence?
Host of the pod, Adam James Cohen, LMFT proposes Second Adolescence as a developmental lifestage queer people might need to grow through in adulthood after navigating their first adolescence in an anti-queer world. Second Adolescence is the [often] messy, terrifying, exhilarating, fulfilling, and, ultimately, healing chapter in a queer person’s post-coming out life. Cohen proposes that for many of us, Second Adolescence at its core is about gifting our younger selves the experiences they missed out on and healing the wounds they accrued that we may still be holding within us.
about the show, Second Adolescence
Each episode of Second Adolescence features a conversation Adam has with a new queer person about their own Second Adolescence. We will hear what their experience was like growing up, discovering their identity, coming out, and then, what their Second Adolescence involved - navigating dating, sex, and relationships with their desired gender potentially for the first time in adulthood, shedding or unlearning belief systems they internalized about queerness, discovering who their most free queer selves are, and all the other messy, beautiful, awkward, and healing experiences that fill Second Adolescence.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts.
The Host
Hi, I’m Adam James Cohen (he/him). I am a licensed psychotherapist based in San Francisco, CA where I specialize in working with adolescents and queer people of all ages.
I traveled through my own Second Adolescence and have been working professionally with Second Adolescence for the past few years. I set out to write Second Adolescence (the book, coming out soon!) and start the podcast because both are what I wish I had as I was fumbling through my mid twenties into my early thirties; trying to find myself as a queer person and struggling to make sense of why I felt the way I did. So underdeveloped. So behind. So uncomfortable, still, in who I was.
First stumbling upon the phrase during a journaling session when I was 25 years-old, Second Adolescence became an evolving framework I used to help make sense and meaning out of what I was going through as I began gaining the experiences I missed out on during my life in The Closet. In the process, I realized how many wounds of my younger selves I still carried, and found myself journeying down the long, messy, and beautiful path that is a queer adult’s trek towards healing and liberation.
Interested in being a guest on the show and sharing about your Second Adolescence? CLICK HERE