Therapy for Life Changes

Let’s be honest - it happens more than anyone wants to admit, that things come to an end at exactly the moment you’re least prepared for it. You keep telling yourself, each time you have to start over, that you’ve done this before and you can do it again…. And while that might be true, it’s also true that you’re exhausted, overwhelmed, and frustrated.

Whether it’s planned or unplanned, transitioning into a new phase of life is something that can get old, really freaking fast.

When you’re starting over, and it’s planned, you could be:

**Getting amicably divorced

**Moving

**Starting a new job

**Retiring

**Going back to school

And if it’s something you’ve been working towards, those are all great things! But then - the emotions hit. You realize that starting over was a choice in some ways, but maybe not in other ways. The unplanned re-starts could be:

**Getting served divorce papers when you thought everything was fine

**Being fired or let go from your job

**Thinking you were getting into your dream school, only to be rejected

**Retiring, only to realize you’re bored out of your mind to the point of now being anxious, and wanting to go back to work

**Having moved, and struggling to find a new friend group

Starting over in life happens in large and small ways, in ways you plan for and don’t plan for, and both when you do and don’t want it. It can leave you with feelings that don’t match up and are confusing, like being:

**Excited and overwhelmed

**Hopeful and fearful

**Exhausted and energized

**Anxious and settled

It’s entirely normal to want life to happen in ways that show up in neat, tidy little packages - and, life rarely happens that way. When you recognize you’ve had to hit the reset button on a part of your life (or heck, maybe it’s your entire life), it’s normal to be anxious, stressed, and overwhelmed. You may also be feeling a whole bunch of grief too, because starting over means a part of what you’ve always known just got left behind. No matter how chaotic it feels to be inside your head right now, I promise you it’s normal, and you’re not crazy.

Taking the next steps on getting control over your life again after you’ve had to start over, can feel really hard. That’s where therapy for starting over comes in.

First, you deserve to have a place to just sit and talk about how starting over has affected you. Being able to process your thoughts and feelings out loud is an important part of reducing the burden you can feel as a result of what you’ve been through, but we’re not going to unpack and stay there. I won’t let you, friend. We’ll start with you processing, but then we’ll get right into what it means and looks like to rebuild.

When you work on rebuilding a part of your life, or your entire life, it means taking a long look at your values, your beliefs, what you’re doing to take good care of yourself, and giving yourself time to celebrate your wins, just to name a few. Having to hit the ‘life reset button’ can throw anyone into chaos - therapy for starting over is the antidote.

Let’s get you back to feeling like you again - full of joy, confidence, hope for the future, and celebrating your strength, resilience, and human-ness.

Becoming a parent is one of the most life altering experiences you could experience, and leading up to it you’re told constantly how joyful all the parts of parenting will be, how amazing your connection and bond will be with your children, and how much fun it is. And that’s all true…. Until it’s not.

Being a mom - hell just being a parent in general - is hard, and while there are absolutely moments that are rewarding and joyful, and you love your children more than you can describe or explain, it’s also exhausting and anxiety provoking in so many ways. What you didn’t realize, and no one told you about, was that there are so many phases your children will go through as they grow up, but as your children go through their own phases… you’ll go through your own too.

And those phases of parenting can often feel like a dirty little secret you’re not supposed to talk about.

**In infancy, when everything is supposed to be soft and sweet and you still have that post-birth glow…. But really you’re exhausted, haven’t showered in a week, everything hurts, and your baby is so colicky that you’re vibrating with anxiety and at your wits end.

**In the toddler years, when your child is exploring the world, discovering new and exciting things, and making their first set of friends… while you’re chasing them around the house, hovering anxiously so you can keep them from jumping off the arm of the couch and onto the dog, spiraling about how to baby proof the house so they don’t stick a pencil into an outlet, and figure out how you’re going to manage another mortgage payment (which really is just the cost of daycare, of course).

**And on to the elementary and middle school years, when your child starts the process of figuring out who they’re going to become, making new friends and finding their first hobbies, learning what school subjects they like and don’t like, and starting to explore what brings them meaning… while you sit at home or at work, wondering what their day is like, if people are being nice to them, if they’re being polite or asking for help when they need it, and just wanting to give them the biggest hug as soon as they come home because you missed them so much, only to be told as they get older that you’re embarrassing and get the ‘Mooooooom , Daaaaaaaaddddd, staaaahhhhhp it’ response.

**When out of nowhere, the teen years hit like a right hook to the face, and all of a sudden your baby isn’t a baby anymore, every day feels like an emotional rollercoaster once puberty hits, fashion now matters more than the paper that’s due on Friday, and if they could roll their eyes any harder at you, you swear they’ll end up seeing the back of their head soon… but while you’re dealing with the rollercoaster of emotions that is the teen years, you’re also learning how to manage the anxiety of your baby (who isn’t a baby anymore) being out in the world, you take joy in watching them really start to show you who they’re becoming as they walk towards adulthood, and you couldn’t imagine being more proud of them. (Now if you can just survive the teen years with as few grey hairs as possible…)

**But all of a sudden, before you know it…. You’ve helped them set up their college dorm room, they’re starting their freshman year at a school that’s hours or states away, and you’re kissing them goodbye, hoping they’ll thrive…. Or maybe they started working right away and you’re seeing all the growing up they still need to do.

Either way, when there’s a mess of tears, hopes, fears, dreams, and wanting to hug them and hold them just one more time, you realize…

In the middle of all the phases you’ve just walked through with your baby, you lost yourself.

Here’s the thing. As you parent your children, you also have to make sure you’re caring for and nurturing yourself. It’s true - you’ll never be done being a parent. But, as your children grow up, they’re going to need different things from you in each stage and phase of development. Just the same as they’ll need different things from you, you’ll also need different things from yourself and for yourself.

It’s incredibly easy to fall into a place, without realizing it, of focusing so heavily on what your kids need that you end up leaving what you need off to the side. When that happens in any phase of parenting, that can leave moms dealing with:

**Feeling overwhelmed

**Dealing with postpartum depression or anxiety

**Feeling insecure about how to parent well

**Feeling isolated

**Experiencing a loss of sense of self

**And more.

I know that being a parent is an important part of your world - I get it, because that’s how it is for me too. My children are everything to me, but it’s so important to remember that being a parent is also only one part of your world and mine. We are whole entire human beings, who deserve to live brightly colored lives, celebrating who we are as individuals.

Being a parent matters - and being the fullest, brightest version of the incredible you, matters even more.

Let’s discover together who that that is, and get your joy back, shall we?

The amount of relationships you’ll experience over the course of your life is kinda wild, if we’re being honest here. From family, to friends, coworkers, bosses, sports teammates, your first crush, to your first dating relationship and first kiss, and then getting married when you find your person, and more - you’ll end up in hundreds, if not thousands, of different types of relationships over the course of your life. These relationships will also all exist at different levels - some superficial, and some will be soul-level deep. And those soul-level deep relationships… those are the ones that’ll getcha when they change.

Whether it’s a breakup, divorce, death of a loved one or deciding to become estranged from a toxic family member (or the whole family), leaving a friendship - every change will leave a mark.

It’s normal for the changes you’ll inevitably face at different points throughout your life in deep relationships to leave you reeling with emotions and physical feelings. Whether it’s your stomach waging an all out rebellion, your heart aching for what once was, feeling like you can’t unscramble your thoughts long enough to put a logical sentence together, or more - these things run deep, they feel constant, and they can last long after the actual relationship change has come and gone.

When you’re dealing with a relationship change, you could experience symptoms, thoughts, and behaviors such as:

**Guilt

**Regret

**Anger

**Anxiety

**Sleep disruptions

**Isolating yourself

**Appetite issues and/or stomach upset

**Trouble focusing or sorting out your thoughts

**Loss of motivation or interest in things

**Feeling empty and/or alone

**Feeling worthless or hopeless

It can all leave you thinking things like ‘why bother,’ ‘no one cares,’ ‘I don’t know how to be without them,’ and then some. These thoughts can leave your brain feeling like a pile of scrambled eggs - you know what’s in there, but have no idea how to sort it all out on your own, and the more you try, the worse it feels. You can avoid it for a little while and pretend like you’re ok, but avoiding it slowly exhausts you, leaving you in a state of wanting to reclaim your life but having no energy and no idea where to start.

Over time, you realize there’s a ripple effect of change happening…

No matter the type of change you’ve experienced in your relationship, one change can often lead to many. Turning to your loved ones, family, friends, and significant other over and over again have gotten them to a point of being sick of hearing about it all. You realize they’ve stopped coming around, and you’re not getting included in events and activities anymore. You’re isolated more than ever, and you realize you’ve started caring less and less about things that used to bring you joy. These realizations scare you, and you start to feel anxious that this is what life will always be like now. It doesn’t have to be this way, and here’s where therapy for Relationship Change can help.

Here’s what we’ll do together to work on managing and overcoming Relationship Changes:

When we work as a team on understanding the impact of relationship change, no matter what the relationship is or was and how it’s changed, here’s just a few approached we’ll take together:

**A whole bunch of processing! That’s first, and one of the most important parts of this work. You deserve to have a space where you can just talk, without worrying about whether or not you’re going to exhaust who you’re talking to. Having a trained therapist being on the listening side of that conversation can be incredibly helpful, because you’ll not only be able to talk it out; you’ll get a whole lot of support and compassion in the process.

**We’ll work together to build an action plan for you to get busy with, to take better care of you. In order for therapy to be effective, it’s important for you to be active outside the therapy space, especially when it comes to how you take care of yourself. Working on yourself requires energy, just as recovering from relationship changes requires energy. As the saying goes, you can’t pour from an empty cup - learning how to take better care of yourself, on your terms, is one of the most important ways to refill your cup so you can keep going.

Now here’s the thing - talking it out and getting active again in your self-care aren’t the only things you need in order to move past relationship changes. We’ll start there, in order to lighten some of the load you’re carrying, and start re-energizing you. But, my job is also to gently push you when you give me signs of being ready to take steps forward, so that you can also start working on equipping yourself with more skills, tools, and strategies for navigating future changes successfully. Here’s a few ways that can look:

**Naming language that helps, and language that keeps you stuck. When you’re struggling, it’s normal to use more and more language that keeps you stuck, without realizing it. Let’s shift that, shall we?

**Getting back in touch with your beliefs and values. Relationship changes throw you off balance, and it’s incredibly easy to fall out of alignment with what you believe and value when that happens. Getting realigned will help you feel more centered and focused.

**Setting reasonable and realistic expectations. It’s important to learn how to check in with what you expect of someone - but if you stop there, you’re leaving your expectations incomplete. It’s also important to check in with if that person is capable and willing to do the work of actually meeting your expectations. You could be asking for reasonable things from them, but if they can’t do the work, or don’t want to - you’ll be left disappointed more often than not.

**Remembering who you are, and having a healthy relationship with yourself. When relationships change, your self-confidence, self-worth, and self-esteem will inevitably take a hit. It’s necessary and important to take the time to get back in touch with your sense of self, focusing on celebrating your strengths, while also leaning into where you can continue to grow.

**We’ll also focus on boundary setting, how to communicate effectively, learning how to recognize and name what you want and need in different kinds of healthy relationships, and more.

At the end of our work together, you’ll be able to walk away feeling more confident in not only yourself but also in your ability to handle future changes in relationships. You’ll have your joy back, and you’ll know exactly where to go looking to find the meaning in life and relationships that leaves you feeling connected, secure, and grounded.

Let’s get you back to living life on your terms, where instead of feeling like you’re drowning in the chaos of change, you’re living large out loud, connected deeply to yourself and the people you care most about, while feeling fulfillment, peace and happiness. You deserve to feel better, so let’s start working on managing relationship change today!