Counseling for late career professional women in Wisconsin who long for a place for themselves in their own lives
Located near Downtown Madison and the University of Wisconsin campus at 406 N Pinckney Street in the Harmónia building, an 1857 Victorian home in the historic Mansion Hill District. Also offering virtual meetings to clients in the state of Wisconsin.
When you’re being everything to everybody else, you’ve got nothing left to be anything to yourself
From the outside you look like you’ve got it all under control. But lately, you find yourself crying in the car on the way to work, or awake in the night overwhelmed with stress. You’ve been running so hard for so long that somewhere along the way you lost track of what you were running for. The life you thought you were building got left behind somewhere like some lost luggage. And now the train is leaving the station, chugging along without you in it.
Your sense of professional and personal responsibility drives you to give more and more of what you seem to have less and less of lately
You’re the one others turn to, not the one they tend to. Of course they do — you’re good at solving problems and getting things done. Maybe you tell yourself you’re just weak, uncaring or selfish, a bad mom, wife or daughter, a bad friend or colleague. But you you simply don’t have anything left in the tank to keep helping others out the way you have been doing all these years.
You may have grown up in a house where tamping down wants, needs and feelings was expected and admired. So you learned to just put your head down and focus on how to help better.
But that approach has left you exhausted and feeling like a fugitive from yourself. An accomplished fugitive, but a fugitive nonetheless.
It’s gotten so sometimes you barely know what your own needs, desires and dreams are anymore, they’re so far down on the list.
You feel disconnected from others, and homesick for yourself. You wish there were a better way to live your life.
You’ve probably already tried all the things you can think of. And still, in the middle of the night, the sadness, the overwhelm, the resentment and fear comes anyway. You’re not sure whether paying attention to your feelings, never mind sharing them, will help anything. But short-term fixes and trying to push down your feelings just isn’t working anymore.
What if your feelings are actually your best guide back to your life?
Using feelings as a guide doesn’t mean they get to run the show. Just that they need to be felt and respected when making choices about how you want to live your life. In fact, trying to get rid of them just makes them stronger and more insistent on being heard, often at the worst times.
Together we can explore what you hope and dream for and build a plan to find your way to the life you want
Our focus will be on supporting you in making the connection you need with yourself and others, and a plan for how to create a life that fits you, that you belong and matter in. You are more than just your helpful doing parts. Absolutely, your family, your work, the world needs you. And, you deserve to have a life that includes, honors and cares for all the pieces of who you are.
What’s Therapy Like with Me?
I believe there’s more right with you than wrong with you. Our work together in therapy uses the parts of you that are already steady and strong to help you through your pain and sadness, frustration and fear, and come out the other side. We explore the habitual patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that used to help you, but aren’t working anymore. You’ll build the steadiness needed to make different choices that lead to consistently having more of what you long for in your life — more aliveness, more connection with yourself and others, and with a stronger sense of meaning.
Therapy can be challenging and humbling at times. In the process it’s worth offering ourselves some grace and good natured humor. The humor will naturally arise at times in therapy — about the things that connect us as people in the room together, about the ways we all are clunky as we try new things many times before it becomes a natural part of us.
I respect the fact that you and I are both dedicating to this process the one thing we can never get back: our precious time and attention. So I come prepared and work hard with you to keep the focus in sessions on what can bring you the most healing. I count on my clients to do the same for themselves when we meet and between sessions. Our work together can help you begin living in a way that better matches your values and honors your own wants and needs.
Choose yourself for a change.
“The struggle won’t heal by pushing it away every time it arises, but by bringing it into your heart as gently and profoundly as possible. It will never be the last time until you are fully aware that it is this time, and it breaks your heart to realize how punishing that behavior is.”
— Dawna Markova