“Am I allowed to need help?”

Everyone seems to want more work while providing less support and affirmation for professional caregivers. Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers along with teachers, clergy, mental health professionals, and a host of others are left feeling tired, stressed, anxious, and alone. You’ve worked really hard to get where you are professionally, but maybe you’re so frustrated with leadership, systems, or patients that you’re ready to quit.

I’ve worked with many helping professionals like you, and I understand how hard it is to reach out, as well as the high value of confidentiality for someone in your field. I will bring you evidence-based strategies for dealing with stress, anxiety, and perfectionism in a high-pressure environment. I know your needs are unique, and I know the culture of your profession can feel like a barrier. Don’t let that stand in your way. Therapy will help clarify your challenges, re-connect with the meaning in your work, and give you tools to combat stress and burnout.

Family Caregivers

“When do I get to be cared for?”

Lots of caregivers are asking this question, but they often ask it of themselves, not feeling as though they are allowed to ask it out loud. Whether you’re coping with aging parents, a partner with a serious illness, a child with special needs, or any other caregiving role, you are probably realizing that you need support, too. But where do you go for your own support?

You’ve come to the right place. Caregiving can be meaningful, and it can also be lonely, and sometimes caregivers feel disappointment, anger, stress, and grief, adding guilt when caregiving doesn’t feel good or sustainable. Not to mention the struggle to add yourself to the list of caregiving priorities! (That’s a thing, right…??) We can work together to build your insight and a better toolbox for taking care of you, too.

Serious Illness

“Is there a place where I don’t have to hold it together?

Coping with a serious diagnosis can feel like an emotional roller coaster and often feels lonely and scary. Navigating the medical system can feel foreign and overwhelming. You might never have expected to be dealing with the changes illness has brought to your life and relationships, and often there is grief in recognizing those changes.

To add to the challenges, it might feel like you’re trying to protect others in your life from the realities that you’re dealing with every day. You might even feel guilty about how your illness is impacting others in your life. It’s understandable that you’d need a place to process all that this diagnosis means for how you live and move forward.

“Why do I feel so alone in this?”

Loss comes in many forms, from a diagnosis of a serious illness or difficult life transition to the loss of a loved one - through death, divorce, decision to go no-contact, or any type of separation. Grief is a natural response to all kinds of loss - changing relationships, losing a job, moving to a new city, experiencing decreased physical or mental functioning, confronting our own mortality, or becoming disillusioned about the state of the world. It can feel like the loneliness of grief will last forever - that you’ll never feel better again. And grief can feel especially lonely when you have lost an important person in your life.

In grief work we often use the adage, “the only way out is through.” Whatever the nature of your loss, it can be helpful to process what you’re feeling and to navigate your “new normal” with extra support and knowledge. There is no need to be alone on this road. We’ll work together to help you process your grief and begin to find what lies ahead.