Is therapy right for you?
Everyone can benefit from therapy.
Some people come because they are dealing with depression, anxiety, trauma, or another recognizable mental health condition. Others come because life has gotten complicated.
A marriage is in trouble. A career that once mattered has become unbearable. A parent is dying. A child is struggling. Retirement arrived and didn't feel anything like it was supposed to. Someone you loved left, died, disappointed you, or became someone you no longer recognize.
Maybe you're angry more often than you'd like. Sleeping less. Drinking more. Enjoying things less. Maybe you've become successful at something you no longer want to do. Or perhaps nothing dramatic has happened at all, and you simply have the uncomfortable sense that the life you're living and the life you want have gotten farther apart.
None of that necessarily means you're mentally ill. It means something isn't working. That's enough.
When the old tools stop working
Most capable adults develop a pretty good collection of ways to get themselves through difficult things. We work harder. Think harder. Stay busy. Solve problems. Exercise. Compartmentalize. Talk to somebody we trust. Take a vacation. Have a drink. Tell ourselves to get over it.
A surprising amount of the time, those strategies work. Until they don't.
This can be particularly unsettling if you've spent your life being the person other people call when something goes wrong. Competent people are accustomed to solving problems. When they encounter one they can't simply work, think, or muscle their way through, their first instinct is often to do more of what has always worked. Try harder.
Sometimes trying harder is exactly what keeps you stuck.
Sometimes the maps stop matching the country
We all carry a map. It contains assumptions about how life is supposed to go, who we're supposed to be, what our relationships should look like, what success means, and what we'll do when something goes wrong.
Then life changes the terrain. A relationship ends. A career stalls. A diagnosis arrives. A child needs more from us than we imagined. We age. Our parents age. Something we believed about ourselves stops being true.
Suddenly the map we've been using doesn't match the country we're standing in. There may be nothing wrong with the map. It may simply have been drawn for somewhere else.
Therapy gives us a place to stop and get our bearings.
What I work with
Grief and loss, anger, burnout, relationship and family problems, loneliness, caregiver stress, major life and career transitions, retirement, perfectionism, shame, guilt, boundaries, chronic stress, and questions about identity, meaning, and what comes next.
Some of those problems have diagnoses. Many don't. You don't need to decide which category you're in before you call me. We'll start with what's happening, figure out what's keeping you stuck, decide what you'd like to be different, and work from there.
You bring the problem. We can figure out what to call it later.
There is a limit to that, and it is worth saying on the same page: sometimes the honest answer is that I am not the right therapist for what you are carrying. That is a conversation I would rather have on the first call than avoid. Here is how I think about it.