If you’re in a life transition...
Maybe you’re reeling from the death of a loved one, or another loss, such as a cherished career. The ground just shifted massively beneath your feet, and you’ve lost confidence as you struggle to get your feet back underneath you and decide how to adjust.
Maybe you know you need a change, or that a change is inevitable. Maybe you’re held back by the knowledge that you’ll need to leave someone, or a group of people, behind, and that makes change scary.
Maybe you’ve been holding back from fully being yourself, such as if you’re LGBTQ+ or neurodivergent, and it feels increasingly necessary, for your own well-being, to live your life more fully and transparently. The question is, how?
How I can help
When helping clients navigate life transitions, I often take a more existential approach, guiding them to better understand their subjective experience and the external factors influencing it. Using all of my therapeutic modalities, I key in on the themes of principles and values, strengths, and opportunities.
Principles and values
Whereas life situations are fluid and often unpredictable, solid principles and values are constants that can guide and support you in unexpected, fluid circumstances. I define principles as guidelines for action: what you will do and what you will not do in a situation. I define values as the morals that guide your principles.
Strengths
Your skills and personal strengths are other constants when life is in flux. I use solution-focused therapy to uncover them and explore how they help maintain or increase stability in your life, safeguard happiness when life has temporarily removed it, or when uncertainty about the future threatens it.
Opportunities
Even in bleak circumstances, such as grief over a loss, or some unexpected challenges, there are benefits you can gain at the end of the tunnel. Change, although uncomfortable, is a chance to reinvent yourself, to reimagine your future, and discover resourcefulness and adaptiveness you didn’t know you had.