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This Is the Work Beneath the Work.

It’s emotional adulthood.

Radical self-ownership.

Real, electric, rooted adult intimacy.

Grow An Unshakable Inner OK-ness

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Stay rooted, connected & brave even in the hardest of circumstances,​ even in the presence of someone else's defenses, limitations, disappointment.

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Feel secure enough​ to find curiosity, connection & choice in the natural pains and twists ​of deep, intimate relationship and life.

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​Feel more safe in yourself​ so you can show up as more of yourself, ​not the modulated, therapy scripted, doing-the-work version...

 

but the simpler, clearer, braver you beneath.

This is the foundation of real emotional adulthood — and the kind of intimacy you’ve likely always wanted, but haven’t quite landed in. ​

Why We Stay Stuck 

(Even After Lots of Therapy or Coaching)

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Even the most respected healing and therapy approaches can keep people chasing the “right” insights, responses, meaning, soothing…

 

We seek to

Understand more

Communicate “correctly”

Figure out the meaning

Learn all the skills

Get our needs met

Get partners to relate to us the 'right' way

 

These can be important endeavors, but they can also become subtle ways we focus on getting something, doing something and end up self-abandoning.

 

Instead of turning towards our own felt center, we unintentionally turn towards something or someone else.​

 

So we circle frustrating patterns despite feeling so close to getting it, sometimes even after years of therapy or self-work, because no one showed us another way.​​

More than emotional intelligence or self-improvement,

I help people grow emotional maturity.

 

Where mature ways of being and relating emerge organically — and often look nothing like the scripts or skills we’ve been taught are “correct.”

 

It’s a paradigm shift in relating to yourself and others, beyond what most therapy or coaching teaches. 

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  • Relationships + Couples + Dating
    Description coming soon
  • Therapists + Coaches + Healing Professionals / Anyone Who Identifies as Self-Aware + Relational
    You're good at this kind of work, maybe have done a lot of it. Therapeutically savvy, emotionally sophisticated, can see people closely, maybe spiritually fluent. You know all your patterns and how to communicate. You've progressed a ton, but are maybe still a little anxiously attached, or emotionally over-functioning or feel unmet or disappointed by others' limitations. You also know your relationships could be so much more connected or so much less frustrating. Or maybe you're circling old issues in work or family and feel so close, but something keeps getting you. Many of us were born with these gifts of emotional and psychological prowess, and like so many gifts, they also became what helped us protect ourselves. So we sometimes unknowingly use these tendencies in ways that end up getting in the way of what we deeply want. And because we are so good at this kind of work, the subtle and sophisticated ways we abandon ourselves or avoid vulnerability and intimacy (despite seeming so good at vulnerability and intimacy) get easily missed - and sometimes even get rewarded and reinforced in this field. One reason I call it the work beneath the work, is because it's the work that often gets missed when you are really good at the work! Without intending to, even when I began seeing clients, I found a vast majority coming to me were therapists, coaches and other healing professions and deep divers. And I love working with them. I understand intimately, personally and professionally, the patterns many of these individuals struggle with - and I also have had my mind truly blown at how different it feels to relate and live on the other side of it. (So easy to say, so tough to do the incremental inquiry and risk to actually build this capacity...but so worth it.)

"Leyla cuts through the noise, she sees what other professionals often miss. But she does so with tenderness. She holds all the protectors, defenses, the sneaky therapeutic or spiritual ways we self-abandon and the people-pleasing, with compassion and respect...so you can find what's real underneath. Then live from that place with agency and a freeing, reality affirming (not projective) profound intimacy with self and other.

Alison Siggelkow, Psychotherapist

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