Anxiety in relationships, parenthood, and identity

Some of the most disorienting therapy work isn't about a single event. It's about the

slow accumulation of "I don't recognize my life and I don't recognize myself in it".

The marriage that's technically fine but lonely in a way you can't explain. The parenting

you're doing well by every external measure and that feels like wearing a costume. The

career you chose for reasons that made sense at the time and that no longer feel like

yours. 

The work I do here is the part of relational struggle that lives

inside you — the patterns, the reactions, the old templates running underneath the

present-day relationship. Some clients are doing couples therapy concurrently and

finding that the individual work makes the couples work possible. Some clients are

deciding whether to stay or leave a relationship and need a space that isn't shared with

their partner to think it through. Some clients are partnered well and the work is about

who they're becoming inside that partnership.

Often there's trauma underneath. Not always — sometimes it's family-of-origin

patterns, attachment templates, the cost of having always been the responsible one. We'll figure out what we're working with.

EMDR is sometimes part of this work, especially when there's a specific origin event or

pattern that keeps activating. Sometimes the work is mostly talk-therapy and parts

work and we don't need EMDR at all. The modality follows the work, not the other way

around.