Successful and completely depleted: therapy for professionals in the Seattle area

You've done what you were supposed to do — the role, the title, the salary, the thing you would have been thrilled about ten years ago — and what you feel about it now is mostly a low hum of dread and the quiet certainty that you're one bad quarter away from being found out. The strange part, the part nobody around you seems to notice, is that the performance is still completely intact. You're still delivering, still the person others rely on, still the one who picks up whatever falls through the cracks, which is exactly why it hasn't occurred to anyone that you've been running on reserves since sometime last spring.

I work with professionals in Edmonds and across the Seattle area who are functioning at a high level and quietly not okay, and usually a familiar handful of things are happening at once: you can't rest without guilt, you can't say no without an immediate story about being replaceable, and your sense of your own worth has become fused to what you produce. That combination is more common than you'd think, and it is genuinely treatable.

Black and white photo of a busy indoor staircase area filled with many people walking up and down. The scene appears to be in a public or institutional building with concrete walls and railings.

This is a loaded topic - Which of these most applies to you?

Burnout Therapy — Exhaustion a weekend doesn't touch, Sunday dread, and work you used to care about.
Therapy for High Achievers — Driven and capable, running on the quiet fear that slowing down would expose something.
Therapy for Tech Workers — Layoff anxiety, review-cycle dread, comparison, and a job you can never fully log off from.

What we would actually work on

Untangling worth from output. This is the center of it, and it's where we'll spend the most time. When your value is something you feel you have to re-earn every quarter, no achievement can ever quite settle the question, the relief is brief, and the bar moves up to meet you. So we look at what your worth was originally made contingent on, which almost always turns out to be much older than your career.

Rest that isn't collapse. Most of the people I see don't really rest; they crash. They hit a wall, recover just enough to keep functioning, and then repeat the whole thing a few weeks later. Together we build a version of recovery that doesn't require a breakdown to authorize it, so that slowing down becomes something you're allowed to do on purpose.

Boundaries with a real job attached. Not scripts lifted from a productivity book, but actual language for your actual situation. And, just as importantly, the harder work of tolerating the discomfort that arrives right after you use one. That discomfort is usually the thing that makes people abandon a boundary a day later, so we practice sitting with it until it loosens.

The anxiety underneath it. Perfectionism, over-preparation, and rumination are, at bottom, anxiety-management strategies that happen to get rewarded at work, which is exactly why they're so hard to put down. We treat them as strategies you developed for good reasons rather than as flaws to be scolded out of. If anxiety turns out to be the dominant thread for you, anxiety therapy may be the better starting page.

A cozy living room with a gray sofa, beige armchair, wooden side table, bookshelf, and large green potted plant. The wall has framed botanical prints and a large portrait of Frida Kahlo. There are two table lamps with beige shades, a small rug, and a window with blinds.

What happens next

You pick a time for us to meet, directly on my calendar. Fifteen minutes, free, by video or phone. You don't have to have the words ready or fill out long forms; I understand the first step can be difficult.
We meet virtually and talk about what's going on. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit, and if I'm not, I'll point you toward someone in my network who is.
If it feels right, we schedule your first full session, usually within a week. I see clients at my office in Edmonds on the waterfront, or virtually across Washington State.

A smiling woman latina thrapist with dark curly hair. She is warm and welcoming. She is a professional therapist. The photo is taken downtown in a therapy office in Seattle WA.

Book a free 15 min consult on my calendar

Common Questions

Isn't this just a job problem? Shouldn't I change jobs?

Sometimes it is, and when that's what I think, I'll say so plainly. Some workplaces are harmful, and no amount of insight is going to fix a job that isn't tenable; therapy is not in the business of talking you into staying somewhere that's hurting you.

But most of the people I see have already changed jobs at least once and found that the feeling traveled with them, and that turns out to be the most useful piece of information there is. If the dread reassembles itself in the new role within six months, then the problem was never only the employer, which means leaving again on its own won't resolve it.

I don't have time for weekly therapy. That's sort of the problem.

I know, and I'd still gently say start, while also being honest with you about what that objection tends to protect. Fifty minutes a week is a real cost and I won't pretend otherwise, but it's also considerably less time than most of my clients lose to rumination on any given evening.

If scheduling really is the binding constraint, there are a limited number of evening appointments, and online sessions take the commute out of the equation entirely.

Will I have to talk about my childhood?

Some, though not as a formality and not for its own sake. You didn't invent the belief that your worth is contingent on your output. You learned it, usually early, in a particular house with particular rules about what got you noticed and what didn't. Understanding where it came from is what allows us to work on the belief itself rather than spending years managing its symptoms with better calendar hygiene.

That said, most of our time goes to your actual life as it is now: this week's meeting, the email you've reread four times, the vacation you keep not taking.