Divorce Therapy and Counseling
Divorce is one of the most emotionally difficult experiences a person can go through. It reshapes your identity, disrupts your life, and brings up grief, anger, confusion, and fear, often all at once. This can show up not just emotionally, but in the body, as a sense of being on edge, difficulty settling, and a loss of internal stability.
A divorce therapist is skilled at helping you navigate this process in a way that restores clarity, stability, and a sense of self.
As an AMFT under the supervision of a licensed LMFT in Westlake Village, California, I provide divorce counseling for individuals going through a divorce or working to rebuild their lives after one.
Whether you need support processing painful emotions, navigating co-parenting, or finding your footing again, therapy for divorce can help you move forward with more clarity and intention.
Why Divorce Counseling Matters
Many people try to push through a divorce on willpower alone, but it is not just a legal process.
Divorce unfolds on two parallel tracks:
Legally, it involves decisions around custody, finances, and timelines.
Psychologically, it is a deeper experience marked by grief, identity disruption, attachment shifts, and changes in how you relate to yourself and others.
While much of the focus during a divorce is placed on logistics and decision-making, what tends to surface in the quieter moments is something else entirely. It’s often late at night, when things slow down, that the weight of it becomes more apparent, the questions, the second-guessing, the loss, and the parts of the experience that are harder to name or resolve.
Divorce doesn’t just end a relationship, it exposes it. What worked, what didn’t, what you tolerated, what you ignored, and what you couldn’t see at the time all come into focus.
The imagined future, the shared identity, and the sense of continuity you relied on can begin to unravel. What remains is often a confrontation with reality, and with parts of yourself and the relationship that are harder to make sense of.
This can bring up questions around worth, responsibility, control, and fairness, along with the realization that not everything has a clean or satisfying explanation.
Divorce therapy provides a space to slow this process down, make sense of what is happening, and begin to work with it in a more grounded and intentional way.
Working with a divorce therapist helps you understand the emotions you are feeling, develop healthier coping strategies, and lay the foundation for whatever comes next.
Whatever you're going through, I’m here to help you take the first step with confidence.
What to Expect from Divorce Therapy with Kristin
Divorce counseling with me is not a one-size-fits-all process. This is collaborative work that adapts to where you are, rather than applying a fixed model or set of steps.
Your experience is shaped by the dynamics of the relationship, the circumstances of the separation, your personal history, including earlier relational experiences, attachment patterns, and the systems around you.
In our sessions, we focus on what is most present, while also exploring the deeper patterns and beliefs that may be influencing how you are moving through this process, including those that may have once been adaptive or protective.
My approach to divorce therapy applies evidence-based therapies that offer both insight and practical tools for change.
Humanistic Therapy
Depth Psychology
Somatic Experiencing
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
We work with the mind, the body, and the emotional experience, not just the surface-level symptoms. The goal is not simply to reduce distress, but to understand the patterns underneath it so that change is not temporary, but lasting.
This work is not about positioning yourself against the other person or trying to come out on top. At the end of this, when the papers are signed and everything quiets down, you are the one who has to live with how you showed up.
The goal is not perfection, but to move through this in a way you can stand by. This is not easy, and it asks more of you than you may feel ready for, but it is possible to move through it without losing yourself.
Humanistic Therapy
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Somatic Experiencing
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Depth Psychology
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CBT and DBT
Humanistic Therapy ✳︎ Somatic Experiencing ✳︎ Depth Psychology ✳︎ CBT and DBT
What Divorce Therapy Might Look Like for You
Divorce counseling supports you through processing and managing unhealthy emotions and changing negative thoughts and behaviors to healthier ones.
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Grief is not always experienced as sadness and can show up as irritability, numbness, or restlessness that is difficult to make sense of.
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Emotions can feel intense and reactive, pulling you toward responses that escalate things or toward shutting down and over-accommodating. Part of the work is learning how to slow that process down enough to choose how you engage, rather than being pulled by it.
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This often involves rebuilding a sense of self that is grounded in your values, clear on your needs, and not defined by the relationship you were in.
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If children are involved, the need to manage your own emotional responses, maintain and model clear boundaries, and communicate appropriately yet effectively is of the utmost importance to your children. Keeping their needs at the forefront supports a more stable and predictable environment and helps preserve a sense of trust and safety as they move through this transition.
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Divorce has a way of making certain dynamics harder to ignore. The same themes, reactions, or roles often show up in different forms, and part of the work is understanding what keeps them repeating, so you are no longer bound to the same outcomes.
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During a divorce, decisions often need to be made at a time when your internal resources feel stretched thin. Therapy creates the space to think more clearly, move with intention, and make choices that reflect who you are and what will support you over time.
Who Can Benefit from Therapy for Divorce
Divorce therapy offers support if you are in the middle of a divorce, navigating high conflict, or simply working to adjust after it is over.
You may feel overwhelmed, reactive, or pulled in different directions, unsure how to make clear decisions while everything is still in motion.
Even after the legal process is complete, the divorce is often far from over, with wounds that remain raw and a mind that continues to race, trying to make sense of what happened.
A divorce counselor can help you find peace, perspective, and a renewed sense of purpose to move forward with your life.
My Approach as a Divorce Therapist
With more than 17 years of experience in mental health and addiction care, I bring both clinical expertise and a deep understanding of how loss, transition, and identity shifts can shape a person’s inner world.
My background includes serving as the Executive Director of a Malibu-based treatment center, where I supported individuals through some of the most difficult chapters of their lives.
People do not arrive in therapy with a single issue. They arrive with a full life, including their history, their belief systems, and their relationships, all of which shape how they experience and make sense of what they are going through.
That is why I use an integrative approach to divorce counseling rather than relying on a single technique.
Humanistic Therapy
Acknowledges that the collapse of an identity and major life transitions are part of being human. We make space for the messiness of that experience without becoming engulfed by it.
Depth Psychology
explores underlying patterns and attachment wounds.
Somatic Experiencing
works with how stress shows up in the body.
CBT and DBT
provide tools for managing thoughts, regulating emotions, and responding more effectively.
When something keeps resurfacing, we do not move past it quickly. We stay with it long enough to understand what is driving it, so that change happens at a deeper level rather than just managing what’s on the surface.
Begin Your Divorce Therapy Journey Today
You do not have to navigate this alone.
If you’re looking for a compassionate, experienced divorce therapist, I will meet you where you are and walk beside you through this transition.
This can be a painful chapter, and it can force you to see things you can’t unsee, shifting not only what you’re willing to accept, but how you understand yourself, how you see the world, and what becomes possible when you are no longer operating from the same set of assumptions.
I offer a complimentary 20-minute consultation so we can connect, talk through what you’re experiencing, and determine whether we’re a good fit to work together. There is no pressure or expectation, just a place to begin sorting through what this moment is asking of you.
Call (818) 399-2016 or visit my Contact page to schedule your free consultation.
Sessions are $200 for individuals and $225 for couples/families and are available in-person and online.
Divorce Counseling in Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks, Malibu, and Calabasas, California.