Specialty · life transitions
Therapy for life transitions
This is work for the in-between. A career ending, beginning or changing shape. A move. A divorce or separation, or a new relationship. Becoming the person who takes care of a parent. A house that is suddenly quiet. Retirement, a diagnosis, a child leaving, or an identity that fit for years and does not fit now.
Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.
What transition work looks like with me
Here is the thing most pages about transitions leave out: transitions are hard even when they are good. A wanted move, a chosen retirement, a promotion you worked years for, a wedding, a baby. People in the middle of a good change often feel they have forfeited the right to struggle, so they keep it to themselves and add self-criticism to whatever they were already carrying. I would rather we say it plainly. Choosing a change does not cancel the loss folded inside it, and difficulty is not ingratitude.
What actually destabilizes people is usually not the event but the gap after it. The old structure — the schedule, the title, the household rhythm, the person you were to the people around you — is gone, and the new structure has not formed yet. In that gap the ordinary scaffolding of a day stops holding you up, and things that were easy for years take effort. That is not a sign you are handling it badly. It is what the in-between feels like from the inside.
My repatterning work belongs here more than almost anywhere. When the old shape dissolves, the patterns it was hiding become visible: the reflex to be useful, the habit of deciding by other people's preferences, the story about what a worthwhile life is supposed to look like by now. A transition is one of the few times those are genuinely available to be looked at, because the routine that used to run them is no longer running.
We also make room for the losses that do not get named as losses. The end of a job is also the end of the colleagues you talked to daily. A separation is also the loss of a shared future you had already partly lived in. A diagnosis reorganizes not just your health but your plans, your sense of your own body, and what you assume about the next ten years.
The old shape is gone. The new one has not formed yet.
Transitions people bring here
Work ending or changing
A layoff, a shift in field, a role that outgrew you or that you outgrew, a brand-new role or location. Often more identity is bound up in it than people expect.
Divorce, separation, a new relationship, or dating
Including the long middle, when the decision is made but the logistics, the family, and the story are all still in motion. This also covers building a new relationship, and the roller coaster of dating in an effort to find a mate.
Retirement
Chosen and looked forward to, and still an ending. We work on structure, purpose, and who you are without the answer to what you do.
Caregiving
Becoming the person a parent or partner depends on. A role that arrives without training, and usually without anyone asking how you are.
An empty house
A child leaves, a household shrinks. The quiet is not only relief, and that is allowed to be true.
A diagnosis
A new fact about your psyche or body. Both rearrange the way you understand your life, yourself and your future plans.
A move or transfer
New geography, new job, new community, new neighborhood temporarily unsettle your understanding of yourself and your life.
How we would work
We start with a free 20-minute consult so you can hear how I work and ask whatever you want. If we go ahead, sessions are by secure video anywhere in California — practical during a transition, when your schedule and sometimes your address are still moving.
Early sessions usually do two things at once: steady the day-to-day, and get clear on what specifically ended. Naming that with precision matters more than it sounds like it should, because grief attaches to particulars, not to summaries. From there we work on the patterns the old structure was masking, and on building routines that belong to the life you are actually in rather than the one you left.
I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and I do not treat bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, and I am not a crisis service. If you are in crisis, call or text 988, or call 911.
- Positive Re-Narrative and Repatterning
- Grief work for non-death losses
- Somatic and nervous-system regulation
- Mindfulness practice
- Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- EMDR certified, and certified hypnotherapist
Questions people ask about transition therapy
- This was my choice — why does it feel bad?
- Because choosing something does not exempt you from losing what it replaced. A wanted move still ends the version of your life that had those neighbors, that grocery store, that ordinary Tuesday. A chosen retirement still removes a structure that told you what the day was for. People in this position often arrive apologizing, as though struggling with a good change is a failure of gratitude. It is not. In here you do not have to justify the difficulty by proving the change was bad.
- How long does a transition take?
- I will not put a number on it, because the honest answer depends on how much the old shape was carrying and how much of your identity was built into it. What I can describe is the arc I usually see: a stretch where the old structure is gone and nothing has replaced it, then a stretch where new routines exist but still feel borrowed, then a point where they stop feeling like a costume. Some people want weekly sessions through the thick of it and less often after. We decide that together and revisit it.
- Is this therapy or is it coaching?
- It is therapy if the transition is affecting how you function — sleep, appetite, concentration, mood, your relationships — or if it has pulled older grief up with it, which transitions often do. It is closer to coaching if what you mainly want is forward-looking goal work with someone thinking alongside you. I offer that separately as Positive Life Coaching, and coaching is not therapy: it is not a clinical service, it does not involve diagnosis or treatment, and it is not covered by insurance. If you are unsure which you want, say so in the consult and we will sort it out honestly.
- What if I don't know what I want next?
- That is a normal place to begin, and it is not a prerequisite for starting. Not knowing is usually information rather than a blank: it often means the obvious next options have been inherited from someone else's expectations, or that the part of you with a preference has not been consulted in years. We spend time on what you notice — what you dread, what you keep circling back to, what you feel relieved to decline — before we go anywhere near a plan.
A steadier footing in the in-between
If you are somewhere between the old shape and the new one, book a free 20-minute consult or send a text. Steadying the ground is the first task; the further one is a life that holds real peace, joy, purpose and fulfillment for you, described in your own terms. Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.