Living and Healing on Sunset Blvd

On a recent drive from the East side to the West in LA, along Sunset Blvd, I reflected on how it mirrors being in therapy. Therapy often begins the way Sunset begins downtown—things feel unsettled. Shiny parts of life sit beside neglected parts. You may feel like some areas of life are going well while others have you feeling stuck. The early work in therapy is to slow down and get your bearings, without rushing to fix everything at once.

As the process continues, attention shifts to the ways you’ve managed life so far. Echo Park and Silver Lake remind us of reinvention, where old storefronts sit next to newer, shinier ones. In our lives, reinvention is continual, but sometimes it can mean that we build defenses: keeping things polished on the outside while leaving harder feelings out of view. These defenses aren’t weaknesses. They served a purpose. Therapy treats them with respect while also creating space for the parts of you that have been covered over.

At some point, therapy often brings you to a Hollywood moment: the dream you worked for finally arrives, and it feels different than you expected. Maybe it’s a new job, a relationship milestone, or another personal goal. Instead of fulfillment, there’s a sense of letdown. This doesn’t mean the dream was meaningless. It means the dream was pointing to a deeper need. Therapy helps uncover that deeper part of you so your next steps can feel more aligned with your values and with who you are at a core level.

Farther west, Sunset presents extremes in the same frame: encampments beneath freeways, palm trees overhead, luxury homes up the hill. Our inner world often works the same way. Strength and fragility can live side by side. Joy and grief can surface in the same conversation. Therapy gives you space to hold these contradictions without needing them to resolve right away. In time, this leads to less inner conflict and more ease and acceptance.

Eventually the boulevard reaches the ocean. Here the road ends, but the view opens. I see arriving at the Pacific as the phase in therapy when clients begin to see themselves—and life—with fresh eyes. There’s a sense of spaciousness and reflection, maybe even some reverence for the journey. And there’s also a sense of hope as we take in the horizon and the gigantic sky. It’s the stage of therapy when clients often report feeling more centered, and more able to face life with hope and greater ease.

Taken as a whole, Sunset Boulevard can feel like a compressed version of the city. Therapy often feels like a compressed version of life. It gathers together the chaos, the defenses, the disappointments, the contradictions, the endings and beginnings, and it helps you live with them more directly. The aim isn’t to erase the past but to integrate it. The sunset at the road’s end points to that possibility: an ending that also holds the promise of renewal.

If this way of looking at therapy resonates with you, I offer a free 15-minute consultation for individuals and couples in Los Angeles. It’s a chance to talk through what you’re navigating and see if working together feels right.