Rebuild yourself after a breakup that changed everything you thought you knew
The end of a relationship doesn't just mean losing a person—it means losing the future you imagined together. Whether you ended a long-term relationship, broke off an engagement, or are navigating an unexpected split, I offer virtual breakup therapy in New York to help you grieve what you've lost and find your footing again. Serving clients throughout New York City and New York state.
When a Breakup Becomes Your Whole World
You thought you'd be further along by now.
It's been weeks, maybe months since the relationship ended, and you're still waking up with that hollow feeling in your chest. Still checking your phone hoping for a text that won't come, or worse—dreading one that might. Still replaying conversations in your mind at 2am, analyzing every word, wondering if you could have said or done something different that would have changed everything.
Everyone around you seems to think you should be “over it” by now. They mean well when they tell you there are plenty of fish in the sea, or that you dodged a bullet, or that everything happens for a reason. But their reassurances feel empty because they don't understand what you've actually lost.
This wasn't just a relationship that ended. It was a future that disappeared. A version of yourself that no longer exists. An entire life you'd been building toward that suddenly has nowhere to go.
And the hardest part? You're exhausted from trying to appear fine when you're barely holding it together.
If this resonates, you're not alone. Breakup therapy in New York isn't about forcing yourself to move on faster or convincing yourself you're better off. It's about understanding the full scope of what you're grieving, processing it at your own pace, and rebuilding yourself with intention rather than just trying to survive each day.
What Makes Relationship Endings So Complicated
When people think about breakups, they often imagine a clean break—two people who realize they're not compatible and go their separate ways. But that's rarely how it actually feels, especially when the relationship was years long, when you shared a life together, or when the ending came as a shock.
Breakups are complicated forms of grief because:
The person you lost is still alive. Unlike other forms of loss, your ex continues to exist in the world. You might see them on social media, hear about them through mutual friends, or even run into them in your neighborhood. Each encounter can re-trigger the grief, making it feel impossible to fully move forward.
You're mourning multiple losses at once. It's not just the person—it's the daily routines you shared, the inside jokes no one else understands, the plans you made together. You're grieving the future you imagined: the apartment you were going to move into, the trips you'd planned, the family you might have built. You're also mourning a version of yourself—the person you were in that relationship, and the confidence or security you felt when you were part of a "we."
Society doesn't make space for this kind of grief. There are rituals for death—funerals, memorial services, socially sanctioned periods of mourning. But for breakups? You're expected to pick yourself up quickly, maybe take a weekend to cry, then get back to your life. There's no bereavement leave for a broken engagement. No sympathy cards for the relationship that defined your twenties. The invisibility of your loss can make the pain feel even more isolating.
Ambivalence makes everything harder. Unlike death, where there's no going back, breakups live in a gray area. Part of you might want your ex back. Part of you knows it's over. Part of you is relieved. Part of you is devastated. These contradictory feelings can exist simultaneously, making it confusing to know what you actually want or need.
Past losses resurface. If you've experienced other forms of abandonment, rejection, or loss—whether it was a parent who left, a friendship that ended badly, or previous relationships that didn't work out—this breakup might be retriggering all of those old wounds. You're not just processing this loss; you're processing every time you've felt left behind.
This is why breakup therapy goes deeper than advice about "getting back out there" or "focusing on yourself." The work is about understanding the full complexity of what you're carrying.
Why "Just Moving On" Doesn't Work
You've probably tried all the standard breakup advice. Delete their number. Unfollow them on Instagram. Throw yourself into work or hobbies. Go out with friends. Maybe even try dating again.
And yet—you're still stuck. Still replaying what happened. Still wondering if you made the right choice, or if they'll realize what they lost and come back.
Here's what most breakup advice gets wrong: it treats relationship endings like a problem to solve rather than a loss to grieve. It focuses on distraction and forward momentum without acknowledging that you need to process what happened before you can genuinely move on.
The "just get over it" approach often leads to:
Suppressing your feelings instead of processing them. When you try to push down the sadness or anger or regret, it doesn't disappear—it goes underground. You might find yourself people-pleasing in other relationships to avoid feeling rejected again, or developing anxiety about getting close to anyone new. The unprocessed grief finds ways to leak out into your life.
Rushing into another relationship before you're ready. Sometimes the pain of being alone feels unbearable, so you jump into something new hoping it will make you feel better. But if you haven't processed the previous loss, you bring all that unfinished business into the next relationship—comparing your new partner to your ex, looking for red flags everywhere, or unconsciously recreating the same dynamics that didn't work before.
Getting stuck in rumination. Without a framework for understanding your grief, your mind keeps trying to make sense of what happened. You replay conversations endlessly, analyze social media posts for hidden meanings, or construct elaborate narratives about what went wrong. The rumination becomes a way of maintaining connection to your ex, even though it's keeping you stuck.
Losing confidence in yourself. When you can't "get over" a breakup as quickly as you think you should, you start wondering if something is wrong with you. Your self-esteem takes a hit. You question your judgment, your worth, your ability to ever have a healthy relationship. The breakup becomes not just about losing your ex, but about losing faith in yourself.
Breakup therapy offers something different: a space to honor the full complexity of what you've lost while building the skills and understanding you need to genuinely move forward.
The Intersection of Breakups and Identity
One of the most disorienting aspects of a breakup is the way it destabilizes your sense of self.
Think about how much of your identity was wrapped up in this relationship. Maybe you were "the one who was engaged" among your friend group. Maybe you'd started introducing your partner as your future spouse, already thinking ahead to marriage and kids. Maybe you'd moved to a new city for them, changed jobs to accommodate their schedule, or made major life decisions with this relationship as the foundation.
When the relationship ends, all of those identity markers disappear. Suddenly you're not planning a wedding—you're explaining to everyone why the engagement is off. You're not building toward a shared future—you're figuring out where to live and what to do with the furniture you bought together. You're not part of a "we" anymore—you're just you, and you're not even sure who that is.
This identity crisis is particularly intense for women in their late twenties, thirties, and forties who've invested significant time in a relationship. There's often a sense of "lost time"—the years you spent with someone who isn't going to be your person, and the worry that you're now "behind" where you thought you'd be.
You might find yourself asking questions like:
Who am I without this relationship?
What do I actually want, separate from what we wanted together?
How do I make decisions now without running them by someone else first?
What parts of myself did I lose or suppress in the relationship?
Can I trust my judgment after choosing someone who didn't work out?
These aren't just existential questions—they're practical ones that affect every area of your life. In breakup therapy, we explore these questions not to find definitive answers immediately, but to help you reconnect with yourself and start building a sense of identity that isn't dependent on being part of a couple.
"Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve." — Earl Grollman
What Depth-Oriented Breakup Therapy Looks Like
Here's what that actually looks like in practice:
We start by making sense of your story. In our early sessions, I'll want to understand the full arc of your relationship—not just how it ended, but how it began, what drew you together, what felt good about it, what felt hard. We'll explore what this person represented to you, what needs they met (and didn't meet), and what patterns emerged over time. This isn't about assigning blame or deciding who was "right"—it's about developing a coherent narrative that helps you understand what happened.
We explore what you're actually mourning. As we've discussed, you're not just grieving the loss of your ex. You're grieving the future you imagined, the identity you held, the security you felt, maybe even parts of yourself you expressed in that relationship that feel inaccessible now. We'll spend time identifying all the layers of loss so you can process each one rather than lumping everything together into one overwhelming mass of grief.
We work with the rumination and "what ifs." If you're stuck in loops of replaying what happened or wondering what you could have done differently, we'll address that directly. Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), I'll help you learn to acknowledge these thoughts without getting trapped in them. You'll develop the ability to notice when you're ruminating and gently redirect yourself, rather than spending hours down a mental rabbit hole that leaves you feeling worse.
Breakup therapy with me isn't a quick-fix approach. We're not just doing behavioral interventions or cognitive reframing (though those tools have their place). We're doing deeper work—understanding the patterns that brought you into this relationship, exploring what it meant to you beyond the surface level, and helping you process the loss in a way that leads to genuine transformation rather than just temporary relief.
We examine relationship patterns. Often, the relationships we choose and the way they unfold tell us something about our deeper patterns—the ways we learned to be in relationship from our families, the fears or insecurities that influence our choices, the compromises we make without realizing it. In our work together, we'll explore these patterns not to make you feel bad about your choices, but to help you understand them so you can make different ones moving forward.
We address the practical and emotional simultaneously. Breakup recovery isn't just about processing feelings—it's also about navigating the practicalities of post-breakup life. How do you handle running into your ex? What do you do about the mutual friends? How do you manage holidays and events where they might be present? When is it okay to reach out, and when is it healthier to maintain distance? We'll work on both the emotional work of grieving and the practical skills of boundary-setting, communication, and self-care.
We rebuild your sense of self and agency. As you process the loss, we'll also focus on reconnecting you with yourself—your values, your desires, your sense of what you want your life to look like. This is where ACT becomes particularly valuable: clarifying what matters to you and taking committed action toward the life you want to build, even while you're still processing grief. You don't have to wait until you're "over it" to start moving toward what you value.
The work is relational, meaning the therapeutic relationship itself becomes part of the healing process. In a breakup, you've experienced rupture, loss, maybe even betrayal. In our work together, you'll experience consistency, attunement, and safety—a relationship where you can be fully yourself without fear of abandonment or judgment. This becomes a corrective experience that helps you trust yourself and others again.
The Non-Linear Nature of Breakup Recovery
Here's something that might bring you relief: healing from a breakup is not linear, and the timeline for recovery is different for everyone.
You might have a good week where you feel like you're finally moving on, making plans, feeling hopeful about the future. And then something small happens—you hear "your song" on the radio, or you see a couple holding hands, or a friend announces their engagement—and suddenly you're right back in the thick of it, crying in your car or lying in bed unable to move.
This doesn't mean you're not making progress. It means you're human.
Grief comes in waves. Some days the waves are small and manageable. Other days they're tsunamis that knock you off your feet. The goal isn't to eliminate the waves—it's to build your capacity to ride them without being destroyed by them.
In our work together, we'll normalize this non-linear process. We'll explore what triggers the harder days (often they're connected to reminders of the relationship, times when you feel particularly lonely, or moments when you're confronted with the future you won't have). We'll build skills to manage these waves when they come—ways of soothing yourself, reaching out for support, and allowing the feelings without getting swept away by them.
You'll also learn to recognize the subtle signs of progress even when it doesn't feel like you're "over it":
You think about your ex less frequently, or when you do, it doesn't completely derail your day
You can enjoy activities without constantly wishing they were there
You're starting to feel curious about your own life again rather than just focused on the loss
You're able to be alone without feeling panicked about your future
You're setting boundaries and saying no when something doesn't feel right
You're making plans that are about what you want, not what you think you should want
Progress in breakup recovery isn't about reaching some final destination where you never think about your ex or feel sad about what ended. It's about integrating this experience into your life story in a way that doesn't define you but does inform who you're becoming.
Why Relational Therapy Is Essential for Breakup Recovery
The way we do relationships is deeply shaped by our early experiences—how we were loved (or not loved), what we learned about trust and safety, what we internalized about our worth and lovability. These patterns don't exist in a vacuum; they play out in every intimate relationship we have.
When a significant relationship ends, it's an opportunity to examine these patterns—not in a self-blaming way, but with curiosity and compassion. What drew you to this person? What needs were you trying to meet through the relationship? What compromises did you make, and why? What parts of yourself did you suppress or amplify?
This is where relational therapy becomes essential. In our work together, the therapeutic relationship itself becomes a space where we can explore these patterns. You might notice, for example, that you're worried about disappointing me or that you're carefully monitoring my reactions to gauge whether you're doing therapy "right." These same patterns likely showed up in your relationship—the people-pleasing, the anxiety about whether you're enough, the difficulty expressing needs or setting boundaries.
By bringing these patterns into the therapy room and examining them together, you develop insight into how you operate in relationships. More importantly, you experience a different kind of relationship—one where you're not responsible for managing my emotions, where expressing your needs doesn't lead to conflict or abandonment, where you can be messy and uncertain and still be met with acceptance.
This is corrective. After a breakup where you may have felt misunderstood, abandoned, or not enough, experiencing a consistent, attuned relationship with your therapist helps rebuild your trust in connection itself. It shows you that not all relationships are destabilizing, that it's possible to be seen and valued, that you can express yourself authentically without losing the relationship.
This work creates a foundation for healthier relationships in the future—not because you're "fixed" or because you'll never make mistakes again, but because you have a deeper understanding of yourself and what you need to feel secure and authentic in relationship.
The Unique Challenges for Millennial Women
As a millennial woman, you're navigating grief in a cultural context that often doesn't have space for it. You've been raised to be independent, successful, and resilient. You've been told you can have it all, but perhaps you're discovering that "all" doesn't feel quite like what you expected.
You might be dealing with:
The pressure to have figured it all out by now, especially as you watch peers get married, have children, or advance in their careers while you're still processing fundamental questions about who you are and what you want
Social media's highlight reel effect, where everyone else's life looks curated and perfect while you're dealing with messy, unresolved feelings
The intersection of personal grief with larger cultural losses—the economic uncertainty, climate anxiety, and social upheaval that define this generation's experience
Delayed processing of childhood experiences as you finally have the space and resources to look back at what happened
Your generation is also uniquely positioned to do this deep work. You have access to mental health resources and language that previous generations didn't have. You're more psychologically minded and less stigmatized about seeking help. You understand that growth and healing are lifelong processes, not destinations.
The NYC Context: Grief in the City
Living in New York City adds its own complexity to the grief experience. This is a city that moves fast, demands resilience, and often doesn't have patience for the slow, nonlinear process of healing. You might feel pressure to keep up the pace even when you need to slow down and process.
The anonymity of city life can be both a blessing and a burden when you're grieving. On one hand, you can disappear into the crowd when you need space. On the other hand, it can feel isolating to carry your pain among millions of people who don't know your story.
NYC also attracts ambitious, driven people who often struggle with perfectionism and the sense that they should be able to handle everything on their own. If this sounds like you, you're not alone. Many of my clients are successful, intelligent women who excel in their professional lives but find themselves stuck when it comes to processing emotional pain.
The city's transient nature—people constantly moving in and out, neighborhoods changing, favorite places disappearing—can also trigger grief about impermanence and loss of stability. Everything is always changing, which can make unresolved grief feel more acute.
What Healing Actually Looks Like
Here's what I want you to know: healing from complicated grief doesn't mean "getting over it" or returning to who you were before. It means developing a different relationship with your loss—one that allows you to carry it without being crushed by it.
You might always feel some sadness about what you lost or never had. That's not pathology—that's humanity. The goal isn't to eliminate grief but to help it transform from something that controls your life into something that's integrated into your fuller story.
Healing might look like:
Being able to think about your loss without being overwhelmed by it
Feeling free to love and be loved without constantly bracing for abandonment
Having access to the full range of your emotions, including joy, without feeling guilty
Understanding how your experiences shaped you without being defined by them
Feeling connected to your own desires and needs, not just what others expect from you
Being able to set boundaries with family or others without feeling guilty or terrified
Finding meaning in your experiences, even the painful ones
The Therapeutic Process
Working with complicated grief is not a quick fix—it's a journey of discovery and integration. Early sessions often focus on creating safety and understanding your unique story. We'll explore not just the facts of what happened, but what it meant to you, how it affected you, and how it continues to show up in your life.
As we build trust, we'll go deeper into the more vulnerable aspects of your experience. This might include exploring feelings you've never shared with anyone, understanding family patterns that shaped you, or examining beliefs about yourself and relationships that developed as a result of your losses.
The middle phase of therapy is often where the real transformation happens. This is when you start to experience yourself differently—not just in our sessions, but in your daily life. You might notice that you're more present in relationships, less reactive to triggers, or more able to advocate for your needs.
Throughout this process, I'll be attentive to your pace and your needs. Some sessions might be intense and emotional; others might be more exploratory and intellectual. Some days you might need to process something that happened recently; other days we might go back to understand something from years ago. This is all part of the nonlinear nature of healing.
Why This Work Matters Now
There's something particularly important about doing this grief work now, in this phase of your life. You have enough life experience to understand your patterns, enough resources to support yourself through the process, and enough distance from childhood to see your family dynamics more clearly.
You also have the rest of your life ahead of you. The relationships you'll form, the family you might create, the career decisions you'll make—all of these will be influenced by how you relate to your own emotional world. Working through complicated grief now is an investment in every relationship and opportunity that comes after.
You deserve to move through the world without carrying the weight of unresolved loss. You deserve relationships where you can be fully yourself without fear of abandonment. You deserve to feel excited about your future without being haunted by your past.
If you've read this far, something probably resonated. Maybe you recognize yourself in these words, or maybe you're tired of feeling stuck in patterns that no longer serve you. Either way, reaching out takes courage—especially if you've been disappointed by previous therapy experiences or if you're naturally skeptical about whether this kind of work can really help.
I understand that starting therapy can feel vulnerable, particularly when you're dealing with grief that might not look like what others expect. In our work together, there's no pressure to perform grief in any particular way or to follow someone else's timeline for healing.
Every person's relationship with loss is unique, shaped by their particular history, family, culture, and individual temperament. That's why I tailor our work specifically to you—your story, your needs, your goals, and your pace.
Taking the Next Step
If you're ready to explore what it might look like to have a different relationship with your grief, I invite you to reach out. We can start with a conversation about what brings you here and what you're hoping for from therapy. From there, we'll create an approach that feels right for you.
You don't have to figure this out alone. Your grief deserves witness, understanding, and care. And you deserve support as you navigate this profoundly human experience of loss and healing.
Ready to Begin?
Contact me to schedule a consultation where we can discuss your specific situation and explore whether working together feels like the right fit. I'm here to answer any questions you might have about the process, my approach, or what to expect in our work together.