Life Transitions

Whether the pressure point is a relocation, a new baby, a divorce, a chronic medical condition, or job or career change, the underlying work is typically more than managing a transition.

While problem-solving may be a part of these processes, often, life transitions involve processing whatever the transitions revealed about your internal world and relationships.  Revelations may include things like unmet emotional needs in relationship, perceptions of self and others that can keep us stuck, and outdated coping strategies that do not work as well in the new context.

Assisting adults through life transitions, often multiple simultaneously, is a core part of my work.  You may connect with some of the brief examples below:

  • events such as leaving home, finishing school, building an independent life for the first time all test your coping skills and ability to create structure out of unfamiliarity

  • often entails leaving an existing support system, activating concerns about belonging, self-sufficiency, boundaries, and safety when building community

  • such as a layoff, promotion or pivot, often reveal beliefs about worth, identity, ability and purpose.  No matter how central your job is to your self-concept, changes can activate concerns about earning your place, fears of inadequacy, and about how well you are spending the time you have. This can be especially impactful in the context of ever-widening wealth inequality and other symptoms of unfettered capitalism in the United States

  • can activate attachment material and self-perception issues, such as codependency, fear of loss of the other or the self, trust, and identity development

  • such as infertility and pregnancy loss, frequently reactivate control, worth, and body-related wounds, often with grief or shame that can highlight inadequacies in the support system

  • creates enormous pressure is on old models of caregiving, safety, and control, which also provides an opportunity to process what you offer to your child but did not receive as a child.  Can also activate relationship concerns such as connectedness and distribution of labor

  • can produce slow-building tension and active discord that expose conflict styles and communicate issues which can be effectively addressed in concurrent individual psychotherapy and couples counseling

  • including your own or a loved one’s, often produces reactions to feeling failed by the body and can involve coping with uncertainty, helplessness, and other mood concerns

  • can have pronounced impacts on mental health due to changes in one’s sense of self as well as body and mood changes.  High-quality mental healthcare can supplement high-quality physical healthcare and can include ongoing consultation amongst providers

  • frequently reactivates old family roles and dynamics while creating logistical and financial challenges.  Can often occur when your own parenting responsibility take up bandwidth, compounding stress

  • brings its own reckonings given the continuous endings and beginnings that life offers.  Individual psychotherapy can offer opportunities to make more meaning, broaden perspectives, and deepen wisdom