Life Transitions
Whether experiences during high school, college, career changes; a recent or an impending move; a relationship break-up or divorce; mid-life crises or retirement: life transitions do not always go according to expectations or plans.
Even when results are gratifying, many of us struggle with mixed emotions or contrary thoughts and urges. We may even feel overwhelmed, isolated, or fearful. Speaking with a neutral professional with years of experience, theoretical and philosophical training, and professional schooling provides useful, practical support to avoid unnecessary emotional and mental distress.
Simply put, therapy is here to enable positive change more quickly and easily than if you handled the life transitions on your own.
Therapy for Life Transitions in Los Angeles
Transitions are difficult in a way that is easy to underestimate, because many of them are technically good news. A promotion, a degree, a move, a baby, a retirement. The congratulations arrive on schedule and the internal experience does not match them, which is isolating in a specific way: there is no obvious person to tell.
Why good news can still be destabilizing
Every transition removes a structure before it supplies a replacement. The schedule, the role, the city, the people you saw without arranging to see them. What follows is often described as anxiety or low mood, and is better described as a period without scaffolding. Naming it that way changes what the work is: not repair, but construction.
Transitions people bring here
Divorce and separation. A career change or a layoff. Retirement, and the question of what a day is for. Relocation to or from Los Angeles. Becoming a parent. Adult children leaving. Caring for a parent whose health is changing, which arrives with its own grief long before any loss. A diagnosis that reorders the future, which overlaps with chronic illness work.
When the transition belongs to both of you
Transitions rarely happen to one person alone. A move, a new job or a new child changes the terms of a relationship, and the partner who is not the one transitioning often has the harder time saying so. When that is the live problem, couples therapy is the more direct route.
Getting started
Consultations are free and run 15 to 40 minutes. Call (310) 927-1755, email michael@michaelneetherapy.com, or use the contact page. The office is at 13101 W. Washington Boulevard, Suite 454, Los Angeles, CA 90066, minutes from Marina del Rey, Venice and Santa Monica, and telehealth is available anywhere in California.