Therapy for Midlife Transitions, Identity & Burnout
You do not have to stay the character someone else wrote you to be.
You’ve spent years executing the playbook - building a career, maintaining relationships, and showing up as the reliable one. On paper, you have it all together. But with real life experience under your belt, the question changes: Is this actually my story, or am I running a script someone else handed me or that no longer fits?
We don't write every story we carry. It's time to unpack the ones that aren't yours.
When the Old Script Stops Working
Long before we can write a story we're proud of, we learn how to manage and survive. We pick up roles from our families, our pasts, society and our careers: the high-achieving performer, the peacekeeping partner, the one who fixes everything. These roles weren’t mistakes - they kept you safe and successful when you needed them. But eventually, the ways you learned to cope can feel limiting or inauthentic to who you are now.
The Roles We Inherit to Survive
Stories and patterns that no longer serve us often take up residence in the body - showing up as chronic tension, anxiety, hyper-vigilance, insomnia, and deep exhaustion. Decades of holding everything together take a physical toll that positive thinking alone cannot fix.
When the Mind Moves On, But the Body Remembers
Authoring the Chapters Ahead
Midlife isn’t an unraveling; it’s an awakening. You now have the perspective, resilience, and lived experience to evaluate your life clearly. Therapy is where we slow down enough to look at the script, see where you have control of the narrative, and consciously choose what you bring forward and what you leave behind.
Areas We May Explore Together
Therapy with me is active, grounded, and collaborative - not passive nodding or sterile clinical theory. Drawing on two decades in corporate communications and paired with integral counseling psychology, I look beneath the surface to cut through the noise, connect the dots, and rapidly map the patterns you can’t see on your own.
We meet your past defense mechanisms and coping roles with respect before helping you decide what you actually want to write next.
Midlife Crossroads & Deciding What’s Next
You may be questioning who you are outside of old roles, career playbooks, parenting, relationships, or survival patterns. With years of experience under your belt, it becomes clear that what got you here won’t carry you through what’s next.
Therapy is where we slow down to examine the beliefs you carry about yourself, see where you handed someone else the pen, and determine whether those old expectations still reflect who you actually are.
This work is about stepping out of performance, unpacking inherited guilt, and authoring a grounded second half of life rooted in genuine choice and self-trust.
Executive Burnout & Performance Strain
On paper, you’ve built a successful life and career. But beneath that capable exterior, you are running on empty - carrying the relentless pressure to perform, fix every problem, and never show vulnerability.
We look directly at the high-achieving script: how chronic over-functioning and perfectionism once kept you safe, and how they are now extracting an unsustainable physical and emotional cost.
Together, we dismantle the harsh internal critic, set unshakeable boundaries, and build a way of working and living that doesn’t require abandoning yourself to stay successful.
Untangling Family-of-Origin Scripts
Long before you entered your career or relationships, you learned specific rules of engagement: be the peacemaker, go quiet in conflict, or take responsibility for everyone else’s emotional temperature.
These inherited roles weren't flaws - they were brilliant ways to navigate your early world. But continuing to carry unspoken family obligations in adulthood leaves you feeling resentful and drained.
We map out the generational patterns you can't see, unpack the stories that aren't yours, and practice setting clear, compassionate boundaries without drowning in guilt.
Chronic Tension & Never Feeling Off-Duty
You cannot simply "think" your way out of chronic stress. The survival narratives you’ve carried may leave your conscious mind, but they take up permanent residence in your nervous system.
Decades of managing expectations and holding everything together show up as shallow breathing, shoulder tension, insomnia, hyper-vigilance, and a low-grade sense of dread.
We integrate somatic tracking to help your body release long-held defense patterns, reset your baseline of safety, and finally allow your nervous system to set the heavy armor down.
Life Doesn’t Come With a Manual. Let’s Look at the Script Together.
Together, we unpack the stories you’ve been carrying so you can author the unwritten chapters ahead and live as the truest version of yourself.
In-person sessions in San Francisco and Berkeley, statewide across California online, private pay and in-network with Aetna.