Move Past Stasis
Individual & Couples Therapy for Grief, Anxiety/Depression, and High Conflict Relationships
Online throughout California and In-Person in Marin County
Grief can be confounding.
You may go for hours, or even days, feeling nothing, only to feel many strong emotions- all at once. If you have never experienced symptoms of mental illness, it might feel very much like instability. If you have a history of mental illness, you might wonder if this is a relapse.
Grief related to the loss of someone with whom you had a complicated or conflicted relationship can be especially confusing.
Illness doesn’t only affect the ill.
Although we don’t talk much about it, caring for or living with someone suffering from severe mental illness can take a significant toll. When they are doing well, you might find yourself preoccupied with wondering when their mood might shift. When they aren’t doing well…your world is upended (again).
It is not uncommon to feel frustrated and powerless- and to feel tremendous guilt related to these emotions.
You might worry that your only options are excising this person from your life or continuing to erode your own well-being, neither of which feels tenable.
Your marriage is over, but you still feel trapped.
When you arrived at the decision to divorce, you believed that you would have a new level of autonomy and agency.
But, with painful negotiations, unsolicited and conflicting opinions from everyone in your life, arbitrary family law mandates, and a generally labyrinthian process– it feels, in some inscrutable way, like your ex has as much control over you as ever.
Worst of all, the process feels interminable.
Your usual methods for coping are coming up short.
You know the techniques, and you applied them. You wrote narrative accounts. You bulleted your journal entries. You adopted mindful eating, meticulous hydration, and practiced daily gratitude.
And yet, the abysmal trajectory has not shifted.
“The world will ask you who you are, and
if you don’t know, the world will tell you.”– Carl Jung
There is another way.
Following a loss or the end of a complicated relationship, the grieving process is as nuanced and unique as the relationship that precedes the loss. No two grief reactions will look the same. It is important to remember that grief is normal, that we are built to withstand loss, and that grief does not need to result in mental illness, relapse, or estrangement.
Maintaining a relationship with someone who has a diagnosis of severe mental illness can be difficult, to say the least. You already know what you should be doing, including recognising your own needs and setting boundaries. It is the mechanics of the process and the system of implementation that can feel unwieldy.
Navigating a divorce, especially a high-conflict divorce, will challenge even the strongest coping skills. You need someone who understands the family court system, the challenges of navigating a divorce from a high-conflict individual, the potential for the family court system to be weaponized by high-conflict individuals, and the ongoing trauma that often persists well past the settlement conference.
Hi, I’m Lisa.
I work with clients who are stymied, often for the first time, by new and unwanted situations.
A wide range of experiences may have brought you here, but the cornerstone of each of these scenarios is not having agency in your own life.
For high-achieving individuals, who have been largely successful in building and maintaining their desired life path, the uncertainty of these stresses can provide a novel challenge.
Together, we will work through these obstacles. While exploring all your various options – from long-term psychotherapy to shorter-term solution-focused counseling – we will create a plan tailored specifically for you.
Reclaim your power and perspective.
Therapy can help you step outside of yourself and find the peace that you’ve been looking for.