About

Life’s experiences can result in emotional wounds.

In middle school, I remember thinking about how everyone is sad and emotionally wounded somehow (I was a unique kid – it got me in trouble a lot!). I watched people change with major losses and transitions in their lives.

As I got older, I learned from firsthand experience about the many healthy and unhealthy ways people grieve or react to significant transitions and how others feel about someone else’s emotional response to a situation. (For the record, most people think that if you don’t respond the way they do, you are either over-reacting or under-reacting.)

Maybe you know stories like the ones I grew up hearing – that one “aunt who was never right after her son got killed,” “that guy just lost his mind, walked into a bottle, and never came out after his wife left.”

There were stories about people who became a shell of their former selves after a divorce or kids that started acting out at school because they didn’t have the words to express their feelings. Other stories were about the stress of a new baby or watching the decline of the parents who always cared for you – and now you are taking care of them. The stories and the roles evolve.

Life transitions are rough.

When I first started on my counseling degree and was asked to indicate a professional interest, most statements from other new counselors were the usual “school counselor,” “working with kids who are behind in school,” and so on. I said grief and loss, and that statement kind of changed the atmosphere in the room. People tried to scoot away from me – in a dignified, unobtrusive manner, of course! I’ve found that loss is often unacknowledged to just “move on” so it will “all be okay.”

The truth is that most of us have suffered losses other than death that impacted us much more than an actual death would have.

We don’t often acknowledge our life stressors intellectually, but as Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk says, “the body keeps the score” of body aches, tension headaches, over-eating, under-eating, feeling off-kilter, being snappish or too accommodating, ready to punch someone…

Wanting to feel different doesn’t have to be complicated.

Through our work together, you can safely examine the nature of the many transitions in your life.

You can figure out who you want to be as you journey from where you are.

You’ll have a safe place with no expectations except that you will be honest.

There will be tissues because there will be tears. There will be time for the “ugly cry” as well as the sighs of relief. And I won’t leave you to do it alone, criticize your process or progress, or tell you, “That’s enough.” Don’t be the tragic family legend – change your path.