Individual Therapy
Ease the Pain You’ve Learned to Tolerate
Whatever brings you here, some level of suffering is usually part of it, anywhere from a struggle you can tolerate to deep and lasting pain. Wanting that to ease is reason enough to reach out. Most people wait until they’re on the verge of a crisis, yet meeting during steadier periods has preventative benefits and leaves room to go deeper.
It’s natural to feel ambivalent about starting. People resist change even when they’re very uncomfortable, and the hardest part is deciding to begin and following through. If it were easy to change on your own, you would have done it already. None of us can face life’s most difficult trials alone.
Bring What’s Pressing on You Now
These are some of the things I help people with every day:
- Change and Turning Points. A break-up or divorce, a move, a new job or business, grad school, marriage, parenthood, retiring. Even a change you chose can feel like a crisis at first.
- Trauma. Single events and the slower, more insidious kinds. Something shifted inside you because of what you lived through.
- Relationships. With partners, family, friends, coworkers, and yourself. My Relationships and Couples page covers this in full.
- Self-Esteem. An inner critic insisting you’re not good enough, and winning.
- Anxiety. Racing thoughts and a loop of regret, worry, and fear that wears you out.
- Shame. A secret held in too long, and the fear of being judged.
- Depression. Emptiness that won’t lift, mornings you dread, and things you used to enjoy gone flat.
- Grief. A shattering loss that’s hard to touch and still needs processing.
- Longing for Meaning. A life gone dull, and a hunger for passion and purpose.
- Stress and Work-Life Balance. Overworked, close to melting down, craving time for yourself.
- Anger. A short fuse and so much bottled up that it needs somewhere to go.
- Psychedelic Integration. A powerful experience you need to metabolize and carry into everyday life.
Free the Strands, Then Braid Them Stronger
What you arrive with isn’t always what we end up working on. One concern opens onto an older one, and we follow it. I also welcome the topics people would rather avoid, like politics, race, and class, and sometimes the work goes straight into them.
Sometimes your inner life feels like a tangled ball of yarn. First we untangle the knots and loosen the strands so they’re free. Then we braid those strands back together into a stronger woven tapestry. That’s what psychoanalysis does.
Most patients meet weekly, in person in San Francisco or by phone or video. What people usually want is relief, understanding, and acceptance. Over time, the problem you walked in with makes more sense, and so do you.
Bring Your Ambivalence to the First Call
By now, you know you need to talk to someone, and it’s hard to know where to begin. You’ve probably tried friends and family, searched online, or asked AI. You’ve done your best to make sense of it alone.
And now you’re here. Let’s use a free 20-minute phone call to find the first knot together.
Request a Free 20-Minute Consultation
Call me today at (415) 993-1301
Talk to Me First
That sentence you almost said is still waiting. It doesn’t need to arrive polished, and the dream doesn’t need to make sense yet. There will be a pause nobody hurries, and room for whatever you bring into it.
A free 20-minute consultation is the best way to find out whether this is the right fit. I can usually see new patients the same week or the week after. Bring the sentence with you.
Request Your Free 20-Minute Consultation- (415) 993-1301
- julia@
julialehrmantherapy.com - 1700 Pierce Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94115