Caregiver counseling and support.

When someone you love is struggling, it can feel impossible to think about yourself. Their needs become your priority, their suffering occupies your thoughts, and slowly, sometimes without even noticing, your own life begins to move into the background.

Caregiving is an act of love, but love doesn't make it easy. You can be wholeheartedly committed to someone and still feel exhausted, frustrated, lonely, or trapped by the circumstances of your life. You can want nothing more than for your loved one to be well and, at the same time, desperately wish for some space that belongs only to you.

Caregiver counseling offers a place where all of these feelings can exist together, without judgment, guilt, or the expectation that you should feel differently.

Perhaps you are caring for a spouse with cancer, supporting an aging parent, or helping someone navigate chronic illness, disability, or a life-limiting diagnosis. You may have spent months or years organizing your life around medical appointments, treatments, difficult decisions, and the ever-changing needs of someone you love. Conversations that once revolved around shared interests, adventures, or everyday life become consumed by illness. Futures you imagined together feel increasingly uncertain.

And somewhere in all of this, you may have lost touch with yourself.

One of the most painful parts of caregiving is the tension between wanting to be there for someone you love and needing breathing room, living room, room to just be yourself for a moment. You may struggle to ask for what you need, worrying that your desire for independence will be misunderstood as a lack of love. You might find yourself accommodating everyone else's emotions while quietly setting your own aside. Over time, this can lead to caregiver burnout, resentment, isolation, and a sense that there is simply no space left for you.

In therapy, we can begin making that space again.

My approach to counseling for caregivers is grounded in existential, humanistic, and mindfulness-based therapy. I want to understand what this experience has been like for you. Together, we can explore the complicated emotions, relationships, and expectations that shape your experience, while finding ways to care for yourself without feeling that you are abandoning someone else.

Sometimes this means learning to recognize and communicate your needs or reconnecting with activities and relationships that remind you of who you are. Other times, it means sitting with the sadness, anger, fear, or helplessness that comes with loving someone whose suffering you cannot fix.

There is a particular kind of grief that comes with watching life change while you are still living it. Anticipatory grief may arise as you witness changes in your loved one's health, independence, or personality, or begin imagining a future without them. You may also grieve the life you thought you would share: the retirement you planned, the places you hoped to travel, the ordinary moments you assumed you would have more time to enjoy.

These losses are real, even when the person you love is still here.

Caregiving asks us to confront one of life's most difficult realities: that we cannot control everything, no matter how much we love, how hard we try, or how carefully we plan. Learning to live with uncertainty is not the same as giving up hope. Sometimes it means loosening our grip on what we cannot change so that we have more room for what is still possible—connection, tenderness, laughter, meaningful conversations, and moments of simply being together.

When helpful, I incorporate mindfulness, breathing, and body awareness to support nervous system regulation and help you reconnect with yourself. These practices can offer moments of steadiness when life feels overwhelming, without asking you to ignore or minimize what is difficult.

My hope is to help you find your way back to yourself by remembering that you are part of the life and relationship you are trying so hard to care for.