Jen Clifton

I offer therapy for burnout and overwhelm, especially for those in high-demand or caregiving roles. Burnout often shows up as chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, irritability, or loss of meaning, with a cumulative sense of depletion and disconnection. My approach integrates nervous system support, connective insight-oriented therapy that pays attention to you as an individual as well as the system you find yourself in, and practical strategies to recover energy and reconnect with what matters.

I offer grief therapy for adults navigating loss, change, and the long process of learning to live alongside what's been lost. Grief can feel disorienting, isolating, and hard to put language to--whether a person is grieving a death, a relationship, a role, or a life they expected to have. My approach is grounded in relational, existential and trauma-informed orientations to grief therapy to support folks navigating loss and life transitions.

I offer therapy for youth and adults with ADHD, many of whom were identified later in life, or are just beginning to understand the impacts of ADHD and normative expectations. They are often capable, thoughtful, highly successful and still feel scattered, overwhelmed, and frustrated with themselves and the systems they navigate. Through a neuro-affirming approach, we explore identity, strengths, and self-perception, and ways of working and living that actually fit how their mind works.

Existential therapy creates space to explore questions about identity, purpose, freedom, choice, responsibility, loss, death, and what it means to live a meaningful life. During times of uncertainty, loss, and transition, it can be helpful to consider how we might endure and even live well with the weight of our choices; losses and constraints we did not choose; the freedom and responsibility to make meaning; and the fact that pain, suffering, and death are ever-present parts of living.

Psychodynamic therapy is first of all relational and works to help you understand the story of your life, of your relationships, of your suffering — including how your past experiences, relationships, and unconscious patterns shape the ways you think, feel, and relate today. This often involves slowing things down and exploring ways of making meaning, of protecting, of avoiding that may be habitual and automatic but out of your current awareness.

ACT focuses on considering your relationship to your thoughts and how you might change your relationship to them — drop the rope — rather than getting stuck continuing a tug of war with the thoughts and urges that come up for you. ACT emphasizes values-based action, helping you move toward a life you want, even in the presences of pain, discomfort, and ill-ease.

Burnout often happens when a person has been carrying responsibility, pressure, or care for too long without enough support, recognition, or room to recover. I work with high achievers, caregivers, helping professionals, and folks with ADHD to create a safe space to regroup and explore experiences of chronic overextension, misalignment between values and work environment, masking, emotional fatigue, and what needs to change -- structurally, relationally, and internally.