Therapy for Vegans in New Mexico & Colorado
It can be hard to care deeply in a world that doesn't always seem to feel the same way.
Living according to your values can be deeply meaningful—and sometimes deeply lonely. As a vegan or animal advocate, you may find yourself navigating a world that often doesn't reflect the compassion and values you hold so deeply. You may feel misunderstood by family, friends, coworkers, or even the people you love most. You may find yourself constantly having to explain choices that feel fundamental to who you are.
When your eyes are open to the immense suffering and injustice of animals, it feels impossible to turn that off. Seeing exploitation, environmental destruction, or injustice can feel debilitating. You may feel anger, grief, helplessness, guilt, or a constant sense that there is more you should be doing. Caring can be beautiful, but carrying the weight of everything you care about can become exhausting.
A lens of total liberation
I view veganism as part of a larger systemic conversation about how we relate to one another, animals, and the world around us. My approach is grounded in a lens of total liberation—recognizing that the systems that create harm and oppression are interconnected, and that the well-being of humans, animals, and the land cannot truly be separated.
Living vegan in a non-vegan world
You may be navigating difficult conversations with people who don't share your values, trying to maintain relationships across significant differences, or feeling like an outsider in spaces where your choices aren't understood. You may experience tension in romantic relationships or family dynamics, loneliness within your community, or frustration with being expected to accommodate systems and social norms that conflict with your beliefs. Or being told you’re “too much” if you decide to opt out of certain things, try to set boundaries, or feel grief nearly every day because you see some form of harm against animals, humans, & the land literally everywhere you look.
Sometimes veganism can come with a complicated relationship between compassion and responsibility. When you know how much suffering exists, it can feel impossible to do enough. You may hold yourself to incredibly high standards, feel guilty when you can't help, or struggle with the feeling that resting means you're not doing enough. For people who are already prone to perfectionism or have loud inner-critics, activism and advocacy can sometimes become another place where the pressure to do everything “right” takes over or tells you that you’re not “doing enough”.
How can therapy help
Therapy can offer a place where you don't have to defend your values or explain why something matters to you.
Together, we’ll explore the anger, guilt, perfectionism, people-pleasing, burnout, emotional overwhelm, and boundary struggles that may be weighing on you. We will find ways to help you stay connected to what matters to you without sacrificing yourself in the process. This isn't about caring less. It's about finding ways to care that are sustainable.
I may draw from IFS, EMDR, Brainspotting, somatic therapy, and other forms of nervous-system support depending on what feels most helpful. Sometimes the work is about processing trauma or grief. Sometimes it's about understanding a part of you that feels responsible for fixing everything. And sometimes it's simply creating space to be a person existing in a world that feels like too much to bear some days.
For my fellow vegans, activists, rescuers & animal caregivers…
As someone who has been vegan for 10 years, has always felt deeply connected to animals, and runs an animal sanctuary, this is an area that is incredibly personal to me. I know what it is like to feel like an outlier in this world, to have friendships fall away, to cry when transport trucks drive by, to have family members make jokes about being “too sensitive”, to feel like no matter what you do, it will never be enough.
You don't have to convince me that animals matter. You don't have to explain why global suffering affects you. You don’t have to tell me why some days it feels like you can’t go on. I get it. I am here to hold space with you - for all of it. You don’t have to carry it alone.