Therapy Santa Cruz
Help, Hope and Healing for hurting couples and anxious adults.
You long to feel more at home with yourself and your partner,
but trying harder isn’t helping.
In fact, the harder you try, the worse things seem to get. You feel you can handle just about everything in your life except what’s happening inside you, and the more you strive to make sense of the anxiety, push through the exhaustion or get back to feeling like yourself, the more overwhelmed you become.
Or in your marriage, you and your spouse keep repeating the same painful arguments. You try to explain, to make yourself understood, to find a way back to the loving connection you once shared, but somehow the harder you try to resolve things, the further apart you become.
You find yourself running on empty, exhausted from trying so hard and achieving the opposite result. You wonder how much longer you can go on like this.
You’re stuck because trying harder isn’t the answer.
No amount of trying harder is enough to override internal experiences that we’ve learned to ignore, push past or manage. And it is in learning to slow down enough to pay attention to these deeper matters, receiving the support to work through these sometimes painful areas of our lives so that they no longer have such sway over ourselves and our relationships, that actual change becomes possible. Yes, this work requires a lot of you, but not more than the daily exhaustion of spinning your wheels and hoping for a different outcome. Trying harder doesn’t lead to the results you want - you already know that. Learning to be present within and with others opens up new possibilities for a deeper, more fulfilling life in which you aren’t constantly caught up fighting yourself or your spouse.
Hi, I’m Laura. I’m a therapist in Santa Cruz who specializes in helping people to figure out feelings they don’t understand. But these aren’t just any feelings…they have been with you for a long, long time and have caused you so many problems. You have been on a rollercoaster ride trying to get rid of them, feeling hopeful when you think you’ve finally done it and devastated when the same unwanted pit in your stomach returns.
You might be reading this having given up hope that anything can be different, and yet here you are, wondering if counseling might help. Or maybe you’ve tried therapy before and it didn’t help like you hoped. So…
Can therapy help?
YES!! Of course, I am biased, because I wouldn’t be continuing to work in this field if I didn’t believe that counseling is worthwhile. But I have seen so many people - people who were ready to dig deep, to finally face the overwhelming emotions they have tried for so long to avoid or eliminate - find relief, healing and peace.
How do I know if I’m ready for counseling with you?
A lot of the clients I work best with have tried many other things in order to feel less overwhelmed and burdened by emotional pain and anxiety. Many have even tried therapy before. But these attempts to feel better either didn’t work or helped for a while only to have the same unwanted feelings return. If this describes you, I’m sorry that you have continued to suffer. It takes a lot of courage to think about trying counseling again (or trying it for the first time if you never have before).
If we decide to work together, I can help you to finally face the emotions you’ve wished would just go away (but haven’t) - because facing them (rather than avoiding them) is what will help. Together we can help you to address these feelings without feeling overwhelmed and help you to heal and move forward.
As the poet Mary Oliver puts it, this is “your one wild and precious life”. If you feel ready to dig deeper in order to live more freely, let’s talk to see if I’m the right fit to help you get there.