Online therapy for women in Edmonton & across AlbertaStop living by default. Start creating a life that reflects who you want to be.
Anxiety | Burnout | MID-Life Transitions | Self-worth
On the outside …You appear high-functioning, accomplished, and like you have it all together.
On the inside …Anxiety, self-doubt, people-pleasing, and self-criticism run the show — and you’re getting burned out.
Underneath it all …It’s starting to feel a bit like you have an informal PhD in everything that frustrates you — about you. Your career. Life.
For someone who’s already over-functioning, anxious, or overwhelmed, “fixing yourself” through books and podcasts is an elegant way to pile onto the existing shoulds and shouldn’ts, musts and have-tos. It can look and feel productive, but it doesn’t always lead to change.
Most of all, you’re worn out by all the worry and exhausted by all the effort. And no wonder.
You’ve been doing life on hard-mode.
I work with women who … Look like they have it all together on the outside, but are privately anxious, tired, and overwhelmed.
Say yes when they want to say no — and take responsibility for what isn't necessarily theirs, because disappointing someone feels harder than overextending themselves.
Accomplish a lot in the most energetically expensive way possible — and feel chronically depleted as a result. Maybe it’s over-researching, putting things off until the pressure is on, or finding that tasks that seem like they shouldn’t be that hard somehow turn into exhausting sprints to the finish line.
Are exceptionally good at pushing through hard things — and are beginning to wonder whether being able to endure something means they should keep enduring it.
Never feel “good enough,” which has either kept them in situations that hit the expiry date long ago, or constantly striving for the next achievement — only to push the bar higher the moment they meet their goal.
Have read the self-help books and listened to the podcasts — and are discovering that understanding their patterns isn't always enough to change them.
You don't need to become a different person to live differently.
You can start making choices that reflect who you want to be — even when the old ways of doing things are still pulling you back.
Hey, I'm Monique.
Therapy with me is practical, actionable, and grounded in curiosity. I’ll meet you wherever you are and help you understand the patterns shaping your choices. We’ll explore what’s not working in your life, who — and how — you want to be, and why it sometimes feels ridiculously hard to get to wherever it is you’ve decided you want to go.
We’ll also look honestly at habits or beliefs you’re carrying that are no longer helping you. Because insight doesn’t automatically create change, I’ll help you balance understanding with action, so that you gradually experience a different way of living.
My work is grounded in a simple idea: awareness + range = choice. The more clearly you can notice what’s happening, and the more flexibility you have in how you respond, the more choice you have about what you do next. That way lies freedom.
We’ll turn insight into something you can actually use in your life.
Specializing in
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You know something needs to change — but every step forward feels hard. Weirdly hard. Anxiety doesn’t always stop you from functioning — but it can narrow your life.
You already know what you "should" do. That's not the problem. It's like pressing the brake and the gas pedal at the same time: one part of you wants the change — maybe even so badly you can taste it. Another part is trying just as hard to protect you from everything that change might cost you.
You can have a lot of knowledge and insight, and change can still remain “over there.” That’s a clue, not a flaw in your character. That’s self-protection.
Anxiety might look like procrastination, being “the dependable one,” overthinking, endlessly researching, or waiting until you finally feel more certain, confident, or ready (for years, even). Whatever form anxiety takes, the goal is usually the same: avoiding the discomfort that comes with moving forward without certainty or very much self-trust.
What protects you in the short term can keep you stuck in the long term. Maybe feeling uncertain doesn't have to mean staying where you are.
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The success you've had by being the competent one has become a trap — and you're exhausted.
It’s only recently that you started realizing you’ve been over-functioning. At some point, you started noticing the resentment, the clenched teeth, the desire to just step back and say, “I’m done.” Once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it: how your need to control everything meant that you took on everything.
You take on more than is yours, struggle to say no, and may be increasingly irritable, cynical, depleted, or procrastinating on things that used to feel easy. The payoff to over-functioning is respect, trust, and others’ confidence in you. The cost is that you've become responsible for everything, including things that might not even be yours to carry — and it’s wearing you down.
Self-help, self-care, vacations, and life hacks only help for a short time. Lately you catch yourself fantasizing about rage-quitting and escaping to somewhere else, just to get some relief. But if you really think about it, it might not be because you want an entirely different life. It’s that you want a different way of living within the one you already have.
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Your life is going through a period of change, and it's bringing up big feelings and questions you can’t easily answer.
Transitions are part of the natural rhythm of life. Some life transitions are ones we worked hard to create. Some arrive unexpectedly; we didn’t choose them, we don’t want them, and yet they’re here. Any change can leave us feeling stressed, disoriented, or uncertain about who we are and where we’re headed. Change can also raise questions about purpose, identity, aging and the passage of time, and what you thought your life would look like by now.
Sometimes, change means grief. Grief is not always about the loss of a person or pet. It’s about the loss of possibility and expectation. The relationship that ended or never materialized. The children you hoped to have. The experiences you imagined would happen. The choice that didn’t turn out how you’d hoped.
No one had to have died for you to experience a deep sense of loss for the paths not taken, or for the paths that have closed. This kind of grief often goes unrecognized; after all there is nothing obvious to mourn, and that makes it difficult to talk about. And lonely.
While therapy can’t stop life from changing, it can help you meet those changes with more self-compassion and flexibility, and — when you’re ready — with more freedom and choice in what comes next.
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Low self-worth and self-doubt (or self-esteem) — can show up in both easily recognizable and tricky ways. You can look successful and highly capable on the surface, but maybe you struggle to take up space unless it’s curated, unfussy, and unbothered. Or you’ve been called “low maintenance” before — and maybe that isn’t the compliment you once thought it was.
Self-doubt can narrow the choices you believe — or even see — are available to you. It can look like staying in the wrong relationship or workplace for too long, poor boundaries, or a lack of reciprocity in your relationships. Maybe it’s not submitting that application, not swiping right on that interesting and attractive dating profile, or not speaking up for your needs.
This can also show up as perfectionism, high-achieving, extreme self-criticism, and over-functioning — and when you’re not doing these, you make yourself bad and wrong for not trying harder.
Self-doubt doesn’t have to keep your life small forever. Self-trust and self-loyalty are capacities you can increase through taking small actions towards a life that reflects what really matters to you, instead of only towards what you believe you’re allowed to want.
HOW TO GET STARTED02Get curious.
Together, we’ll explore where you are now, where you want to be, and ask questions about why it’s been hard to take the meaningful steps needed to begin closing that gap.
Whatever brings you here, you’ll set the goals and we’ll work at a pace that doesn’t add to the overwhelm.
03Get creative.
Creating lasting change, experiencing more pleasure and enjoyment in life — and more of whatever it is that matters most to you — isn’t about one dramatic breakthrough or a six-week glow-up.
It’s built through putting the knowledge and insight you’ve collected into practice, one intentional choice at a time.