Relationships & Grief
Somatic therapy for attachment wounds, self-abandonment, people-pleasing, and grief.
Relationships & Attachment
What you might be experiencing:
Maybe you find yourself anxious in relationships, unsure if you're "too much" or not enough. Maybe you shut down or withdraw when things get close. You might notice patterns repeating — choosing unavailable people, struggling to ask for what you need, or feeling responsible for everyone else's emotions but your own. Attachment wounds often started early, long before you had language for them.
Our somatic approach:
Attachment patterns are nervous-system patterns — learned responses to what felt safe or unsafe in your earliest relationships. We'll notice how your body responds in connection: where you brace, where you collapse, where you go quiet. From there, we build new capacity for closeness that doesn't require abandoning yourself, and for boundaries that don't require cutting people off.
What to expect together:
Our own relationship becomes part of the work — a place to practice showing up authentically, tolerating repair, and being met without judgment. Many clients leave this work more able to stay present in relationships without losing themselves, and more able to identify what healthy connection actually feels like in the body, not just on paper.
Self-Abandonment & People-Pleasing
What you might be experiencing:
You might not know what you want anymore — you've spent so long attuned to everyone else's needs, moods, and expectations that your own preferences feel foggy or out of reach. Saying no might bring guilt before it brings relief. You may find yourself agreeing to things you don't want, softening opinions you actually hold, or feeling responsible for keeping the people around you comfortable, even at your own expense. Self-abandonment isn't always dramatic — sometimes it's just years of quietly opting out of yourself.
Our somatic approach:
Self-abandonment often begins as a survival strategy — a way of staying safe or loved by prioritizing others. In the body, this can look like a chronic outward orientation: scanning others' faces and tone before checking in with your own. We work on rebuilding the felt sense of your own internal signals — what your body actually wants, likes, and needs — so that coming back to yourself doesn't feel foreign or unsafe.
What to expect together:
This work is slow and relational by nature — reconnecting to yourself often happens through being met by someone else without needing to perform or please. Expect gentle, ongoing practice in noticing your own wants, tolerating the discomfort of disappointing others, and building a life that includes you, not just everyone around you.
Grief & Loss
What you might be experiencing:
Grief isn't only about death — it can be the loss of a relationship, an identity, a version of your family you hoped for, a culture or homeland you're disconnected from, or a future you imagined that didn't happen. You might feel like your grief doesn't fit into a "normal" timeline, or that you're not allowed to grieve certain losses out loud. There can also be a heaviness in the body that doesn't seem to lift, even when logically you feel you should be "over it."
Our somatic approach:
Grief lives in the body as much as the mind — a tightness in the chest, a held breath, a fatigue that sleep doesn't fix. Somatic work gives grief somewhere to move, rather than staying frozen or suppressed. We make room for the full, often contradictory range of what grief holds: sadness, relief, anger, love, guilt — all of it welcome, none of it rushed.
What to expect together:
There's no expectation to "move on" by a certain point. We'll honor grief as an ongoing relationship rather than a problem to solve, while helping you find ways to keep living fully alongside it. This includes space for ambiguous or disenfranchised grief — losses that others may not recognize or validate, which are often the hardest to carry alone.