The most exhausting role you’ll ever play: yourself, for everyone else.
Therapy for burnout & people pleasing in Florida & New Jersey.
Tired of bending over backwards to make everyone else comfortable—while secretly collecting resentments?
being attuned to everyone around you isn’t a character flaw; it’s a superpower, aimed in the wrong direction.
You're skilled at being invisible, agreeable, and concerned for others. The gracious yes when you meant no, the laugh that smooths things over, the way you can hold someone else's discomfort together with both hands while yours quietly piles up in a corner. All commendable, but at what cost?
You’re smart, resourceful, and reliable but you’re also trapped. Sweeping things under the rug isn’t working because you still can’t figure out what you need or how to communicate it clearly, without crawling out of your skin. Imagine extending the grace and compassion you so generously offer to others—to yourself, guilt free. This is where our work begins.
Feel familiar?
Fear of criticism, rejection, abandonment, or isolation
Rearranging your schedule several times a week, day, hour, to meet the needs of others
Avoiding conflict, confrontation, and difficult conversations
Feeling worn out, spread thin, and on edge most of the time
cue belly breath here.
When you protect your energy, you actually expand your capacity.
The tension you feel is telling you something. Maybe you need to be more direct with your friends, stop working overtime, let your kid tie their own shoe, or pick up a sketchbook again. Together, we can explore the roles you’re tired of playing and begin to write a new script for living. One that has your own rules, the right cast of characters, and plenty of notes for more joy, curiosity, and vitality!
Let’s start rehearsing.
why this time will be different
I understand the courage it takes to speak to what’s happening in the room and I’m not afraid to go there. Kid gloves optional.
Let’s get real, you’ve been doing self-imposed mental health counseling for years. You’re here because you’ve read the Wayne Dyer books, exhausted a journaling era or two, tried reiki, essential oils, coaching, and CrossFit—and you still sprint in the opposite direction when it comes time to say what’s on your heart of hearts.
What makes this different isn't a secret method, it’s soul. It's the foundational awareness that we are all deeply flawed human beings who need to feel love and belonging. I see my responsibility as helping you build a tolerance to experiencing your humanity without shutting down, running away, or steam rolling yourself on loop.
The creative process is my most reliable guide to shift attention from outcome and performance to sensation and attunement. Anyone can take the next right step. I want to help you build stamina. Off the bat, rather than expecting you to have all the answers, I join you as a co-adventurer, excavating the true source of your discomfort and mining nuggets of wisdom along the way.
Ultimately, what changes isn’t you, it’s your relationship to you. Edginess softens, rest comes easier, and finding the right words doesn’t feel like a matter of life and death. Think less prickly and more present.
I take extra care to tend transitions (between topics, sessions, moods, & layers) because these are the built-in borders for solidifying change. I am careful to follow your lead and read your preferred pace while also offering opportunities to move to a different rhythm. Rather than having an agenda, my emphasis is on choice, context, and connection. My hope is that our relationship sets the stage to root down into your values, speak your truth, and liberate innate creative forces. My goal is to help you face every fear that requires you to stand for something—even if it means standing alone—by learning how to be more at home in your own skin.
When our season together has concluded:
You’ll be fortified and fully alive.
what to expect
Sessions with me are…
01semi-structured
I’m like a Type B camp counselor—-there’s a schedule, but we’re absolutely stopping to look at that interesting thing in the woods.
02restorative
Reminiscent of being at that friend’s house down the block whose mom was always cooking and saved you a seat.
03INSPIRING
A documentary that made you reorganize your whole weekend—energy, new direction, new questions—but make it your life.
“I've had the sincerest pleasure in working with Marisa on a collaborative project requiring sensitivity and clarity, and I have to say, I believe her attention to detail is crisp!
She gave me an opportunity to playtest a solution before it was ready and invited me to be messy in a safe space where a real, permanent solution could be born from our conjoined exploration. ”
— Blyth Ellsworth, Entrepreneur
time to live lighter.