Why You Don’t Have To ‘Have It Together’ In Your 20s & 30s with Lindsay Goldfarb of The Sterling Group

adulting is hard — especially in your 20s and 30s, when perfectionism, comparison, and pressure to “have it all together” are at their peak.

in this episode of all our parts, i sit down with lindsay goldfarb — executive director of the sterling group — for a raw, validating conversation on navigating the quarter-life crisis and learning to trust yourself through it.

we explore:
 🌀 why so many of us feel like we’re lowkey spiraling
 💭 perfectionism + the exhausting need for external validation
 🚫 how to stop chasing lives that only look good on paper
 ✨ the messy but powerful process of building self-trust
 🌱 embracing flexibility, change, and your own damn timeline

if you’ve ever thought, “shouldn’t i have it together by now?” — this episode will remind you that you’re not behind, you’re just becoming.

🎧 tune in for the pep talk (and practical tools) you didn’t know you needed to navigate adulthood without losing yourself.

connect with the sterling group:

📲 TikTok: @thesterlinggroupdc

📸 Instagram: @thesterlinggroupdc

🌐 Website: www.thesterlinggroupdc.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to All Our Parts. I am so excited to have my next guest. She is a fellow Washington, D.C. clinician, executive director of the Sterling Group. Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having

SPEAKER_01: 0:17

me.

SPEAKER_00: 0:18

So tell me about the Sterling Group. What is your specialty? What are you all rooted in? So

SPEAKER_01: 0:26

the Sterling Group, we work with loosely 20 and 30-somethings. It started with this realization of the kind of stereotypical like young adult stage, at least in textbooks and medically is like 18 to 24. I have yet to meet a 24 or 25 year old that has graduated from the young and is like middle aged or settled into their lives or identities, their careers. There's just a gap in that sort of support for this age group and also This extra expectation and pressure that, oh, young adulthood ends at 25, so you better have it all together. And that, again, is just not the case and was certainly not my personal experience. So we really love working with people anywhere from college through 20s, 30s plus around those, all of the life transitions that take those decades, not just years to even longer than that, but the transitions that come up as well. We figure out our adult lives, our personal identities, our professional identities, our relationship and family identities, and how we put those pieces together in a way that's really meaningful and authentic to who we are and our values.

SPEAKER_00: 1:52

Yeah, 100%. When we think about the expectation around 20, 30-somethings, it's okay. You've graduated, you have your major, and now you are ready to be 100% certain about what you're going to do next and jump into that career and start building a life of stability, which then creates this heightened level of anxiety because we know as fellow 20, 30-somethings, that is not happening. No, they

SPEAKER_01: 2:24

give you that extra three years after college until you're 24. And then that's it. Then you're a fully formed grown up. Yeah. And especially in the DC area and around a lot of major cities in their suburbs, there's already that expectation and that pressure and the ambition and the drive, all of these things that make DC so fast paced and the hustle culture. So just adding that we already have that. that ingrained in us from starting school, if not sooner, and to graduate from college or wherever we are in that 18 to 21. Okay, who are you now? And what are you going to do with your life? And so there's that additional layer of expectation, both internally and also from society. I

SPEAKER_00: 3:13

love that you mentioned the very geographical reality of living in the DMV, especially I went to Catholic school, private school, all through here in Prince George's County, so right outside of Washington, D.C. Ambition being in an athletic conference that was televised often, a program that praised achievement, success, being in 10 clubs while taking all these AP courses, it has formed the adult that I am today and the very pressure to live up to that expectation then and in adulthood creates this anxiety, this need to be perfect, this need to always be doing. And then when it doesn't feel like enough, it starts like that feeling of shame and failure, essentially.

SPEAKER_01: 4:09

Yeah, absolutely. I'm nodding too, because I grew up in Montgomery County and I went to public school. I did, I was taking college classes in senior year of high school somehow. I took so many AP that I basically started college as a sophomore because I had all these credits from taking AP classes and these college classes. What is the most that you can do and you can achieve as a kid to set yourself up for the future? So on a personal level, in addition to the clients that we work with, I really relate to that experience.

SPEAKER_00: 4:43

How did you see that impact or shape your college years into growing the Sterling Group as well?

SPEAKER_01: 4:53

Great question. I think that starting in college through graduate school and my early professional life The lack of structure, even in college, you're still getting grades and feedback in that way. You can shoot for those perfect grades and scores. As some of that structure fell away, I found myself a little lost and uncertain. Straight A's and to do, I'm already in the college. That was the big, growing up in high school, that was the big thing. Like what college are you going to get to? What college are your peers going to get to? I found myself in a bit of an identity crisis of also, because I don't want my grades or my scores to define me, but I don't have much... else like in its place. So I found myself wrestling with that like self-worth and sense of self. I feel very lucky that in high school, I decided that I was really interested in psychology and I wanted to pursue a psychology major in college and presumably become a therapist. And that seems to have tracked. That has continued luckily because who was I to make that decision when I was 16 years old? It panned out. I think we have that pressure at such a young age to decide what is your path going to be? What's your major? What are you going to do after college? And what does that look like So I think I see this in a lot of clients that we work with now. They picked something at 16, 17, 18, and they pursue it. You climb the ladder, you climb the chain in the corporate world or wherever you are, and then you find yourself at some point in this process in your twenties and thirties. Wait, I don't really love where I've reached the top of the ladder or I'm climbing the ladder, which is what I've always been driven to do, but it's not bringing me the fulfillment and happiness. that I thought it would, or I don't, or the money, the, you know, titles that they don't bring the same validation as they used to, but I can't start over. I can't start from scratch. I've worked so hard for this. I think that was, again, I had didn't, I've stayed on this career and education trajectory from the beginning, but I had a similar kind of identity crisis and also see this in so many of the clients that we work with.

SPEAKER_00: 7:29

Yeah, I can relate to so much of what you just said. I took AP psych in high school. And in undergrad, I majored in psychology. And thankfully, I did know I was like, Okay, I want to work in the mental health field. And I also had this identity crisis of I didn't really know what that looked like. I knew what a therapist was, I knew what they did, but I wasn't like, 100% sold. So I went through a couple like career trips, went into quasi-government because I felt, okay, that's what I'm supposed to do. This is where I can see clear trajectory of climbing the ladder and reaching this idea of success. Hated it, was not fulfilling, and ultimately went to grad school. And there where I was able to shape, okay, what kind of therapist do I want to be? How do I show up? And then choosing to branch out into the social media space has also granted me And to this next level of identity exploration and challenging the beliefs of what does it mean to be a therapist that's also more public facing it. I'm going to be perceived as flaky. I'm going to be perceived as someone that doesn't know when some of the best freedom that we can offer ourselves is the space to not know. That

SPEAKER_01: 9:10

was beautifully said. I think you're speaking to me what a brave decision it is to decide. to ditch the career you were working towards, go back to grad school, not just because of the shame or the judgment that might come from starting from scratch, but also just our identities are so connected to that. So it's really saying, okay, I'm going to abandon this part of myself or at least shift it dramatically and start over. So that's a really brave, scary choice

SPEAKER_00: 9:42

to make. Did you ever get any slack for being a young person who is also ambitious?

SPEAKER_01: 9:51

Another great question. I think the slack came from myself, from myself, just not that imposter syndrome. I've always looked young. I don't know if I still do, but I hope at this point I hope, but for a while I was very self-conscious about people taking me seriously. I didn't get a lot of evidence that was an issue, but it was definitely in my head that kind of tug of war between I have to be ambitious. I have to drive, but also Am I cut out for this? Am I too young? Am I too inexperienced? Particularly starting my private practice even before I expanded to the group, as well as just my pre-therapy life. I was working in social service agencies in New York where I lived, and I was working with adults of all ages and all backgrounds and very underserved populations and feeling at the time I really was 23, 24, 25, trying to make a difference. And so I think that was very daunting, but it also instilled the confidence that, okay, this, I can make a difference and it doesn't. Yeah. Some people are like, you could be my daughter, but many were just grateful and appreciative and that I still had something to offer. So I think that was really boosting for me at the time. I

SPEAKER_00: 11:21

love that you speak to our internal voice being our biggest critic, our biggest judge. We are telling ourselves, you're not cut out for this. You're And that can be the biggest barrier to what gets us to take those next steps forward.

SPEAKER_01: 12:00

Totally. And I think too, as therapists, we're taught to be self-reflective, to introspect, to understand how do we impact others? How do we impact ourselves? So I think sometimes too, there can be a clashing there or an exacerbation maybe of that. We're programmed to at least question, maybe not to doubt, but to question and reflect, which can converge in a messy way with that imposter syndrome as well.

SPEAKER_00: 12:29

Definitely, especially especially if within achievement, it's very outcome-based. In school, you are striving for an A, ideally, and then you're striving for the sashes that you wear, and then there's always this outcome. When you get to those 20, 30-somethings, the outcome is less tangible. It is very ambiguous, and the failure feels so great. I feel like sometimes because you don't always see what you're working towards. You don't always see the A, the other side of things. You just know you're hoping that you're making the right steps forward and that it culminates into this very meaningful life.

SPEAKER_01: 13:18

And I think the other piece of achievement-based self-worth is that it's very rooted in external validation. So you're getting grades, especially in younger years of schooling. Every week, your progress is being tracked. You get report cards, there are parent-teacher conferences. There's a lot of extracurriculars that may or may not, if it's sports or something, then yes, there's winning and losing and things like that. You have your parents giving you feedback of some reinforcement or criticism if the grades are not where they want them to be. So it's all rooted in that, what do other people, like the other people telling me that I'm good, that I'm smart, that I'm worthy. And as we get older, there's less and less of that. So even in college, you do papers here and there that you'll get a grade. You get your grade at the end of the semester. And then when you're in the professional world, like an annual review you get. And depending on your job and your boss, like there may be more frequent informal feedback, but we're at that point is I have this one review a year that I get told my worth and that there isn't that structured... validation that we've come to rely on so much. And we haven't built up that muscle to validate ourselves and to decide. And if we, the way that we do validate ourselves is perfect. Was it perfect or was it not? And that's the like black, white scale that we grade ourselves on, which is not fair. We're not saying, Oh, maybe that was a B plus, which is okay. Was it an A or was it an F?

SPEAKER_00: 15:06

So I like, when you said that one review a year that we are letting define our worth.

UNKNOWN: 15:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:18

I remember being in a space where I'm waiting for the external validation. it's either an A or an F. So then I'm left to pick up the pieces of, okay, it wasn't an A plus. So I'm a failure, not met all the negative feedback loops that start to play out when the feedback comes in your right. We don't always have the space or we don't always know how to build that muscle of building an internal voice that is your own validation, that is feeling good about where you are being your own definition of success again there's so many environmental societal factors that play into our perceptions of success and so to unravel that especially in the therapy space to be like okay maybe my idea of success is completely different than what i was taught is both scary and the other side of it is pretty freeing

SPEAKER_01: 16:46

Absolutely. It's like many things, it's a difficult skill to pick up in our development journey as young adults. And it's scary to abandon the system that we're used to. And it's hard. It's just a lot of work to get to that freeing side and trust yourself to do it, which can be super powerful, but it's a big hurdle for us perfectionists too.

SPEAKER_00: 17:14

What would you say is the first step in beginning to start building or training that muscle of internal validation? I

SPEAKER_01: 17:24

always start with values and doing that sort of self-reflection and getting clear on what really are like specific personal values are. I think often when you ask someone, what are your values? They'll say family. Yeah. Sure. Because it's probably true. And also because I think that's the right thing to say. Of course, we all love and value our family, but what does that really also, are we talking about family of origin? Are we talking about chosen family? What does that look to breaking that? And not just family, but the specifics of what that looks like, what allows you to be healthy? Same with money. Yes. Because we live in a capitalist world and that, so everyone needs money to survive, but what In theory, sure, it's great to make a ton of money and be super wealthy. That could be an ideal, but is that the reigning value? I think part of that achievement-based mindset is keep climbing the ladder, keep getting promotions and raises because that's cash is king, right? But is that really in our values system? And if we've been climbing the ladder for the sake of money and title and success in that regard, but we're not fulfilled by it, like we're miserable, then the paycheck doesn't, aside from keeping us alive and paying rent, doesn't sustain that. So there's a values clash there. That's also not an easy step, but I think really coming back to the basics of who am I and what I've been taught to value praise and feedback, but is that what feels good about that? What feels good about getting that validation and then what are the things that make me feel that way that are in my control, that don't require other people to tell me that I'm good enough, I'm smart enough. So

SPEAKER_00: 19:25

that's the first step. What are your values outside of what you were taught outside of what you were told to believe? Like being able to build that sort of structure for yourself takes time and that is okay.

SPEAKER_01: 20:11

And it can change throughout our lives. And it should change probably as we grow and our identities shift and get more complex.

SPEAKER_00: 20:23

Yeah. change aspect scares us. And again, it goes back to this idea of knowing, like we're supposed to be certain. And so when we change, it's like I've invested all this time and energy and there's a past version of me that really wanted this. And that's what we have to remind ourselves is that there is a past version of you that like really wanted this. Like this is what they were hoping and working towards. And then we grow and we change as people. And then giving ourselves the space and grace to meet ourselves where we are is so valuable.

SPEAKER_01: 21:01

And it's introducing that flexibility that we don't naturally have as perfectionists, because it's taking you out of that all or nothing. It's allowing space for the gray area or just for things to that it's not either or all the time and that things can shift. So that sort of mental flexibility is also is another muscle that we want to build around undoing some of the perfectionist tendencies.

SPEAKER_00: 21:32

Lindsay, I have loved this conversation so much. It is, give me something to continue even reflecting on. And I hope this conversation at least reinforces the idea for people that like you are going to change, you are going to evolve and it gets to be a long process and you're not behind, you are running your own race, all of the things that are sometimes really important reminders that we can forget when we're trying to make life transitions Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 22:05

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 22:06

How can people find you or find the Sterling Group if they're looking to work with you all?

SPEAKER_01: 22:13

Yeah, we have an office in downtown DC, Metro Center. We also work virtually with clients in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. You can find us online. Our website is thesterlinggroupdc.com. And on socials, we're also the Sterling Group DC.

SPEAKER_00: 22:33

All of that will be linked in the show notes. Then my final question I ask all of my guests is what is your commitment to yourself for 2025?

SPEAKER_01: 22:43

So many great questions. I love that. My commitment to myself is there's so many. Thank you so much. And making sure I am aligning with my own values and seeing what has shifted and what I can allow to shift to make space for. this life that has expanded over the last few years.

SPEAKER_00: 23:46

Thank you so much for sharing. And thank you so much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01: 23:50

Thank you so much.