About Life Transitions
Life Transition Therapy in Santa Monica & Los Angeles
Even positive life changes can bring grief. Retirement, divorce, an empty nest, a move, a new career, becoming a parent these transitions shake our sense of identity and purpose, often in ways we don’t expect.
Dr. Sally Hackman, PhD, MFT, helps adults in Santa Monica and the greater Los Angeles area navigate major life changes with clarity, resilience, and a renewed sense of direction. Managing life transitions is not just about surviving change, it is about understanding what the change means to you, and who you want to be on the other side of it.
Key Points
Guiding You Through Change.
Empowering Resilience
Major transitions often unearth old patterns and feelings we thought we'd left behind. Therapy helps you understand what's being stirred and develop the resilience to move forward.
Healing Space
In-person in Santa Monica or via Zoom a confidential space to process the complexity of change without judgment or pressure.
Transformative Support
Dr. Hackman helps clients at every stage of adult life from young adults navigating early career and relationships to older adults facing retirement, loss of role, and the transitions of aging.
OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU
Your Wellbeing Is Our Priority.
Transitions are turning points and the right support at a turning point can change the entire trajectory of what comes next. Dr. Hackman brings 35 years of experience helping adults make the most of life’s biggest changes.
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Years of Clinical Experience
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Serving Santa Monica Continuously
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Confidential — Always
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First Session Free If You Don't Return
FAQ
Common Questions
Because transitions — even welcome ones — involve loss. The end of one chapter, even a painful one, requires grieving before you can fully inhabit the next. Dr. Hackman helps you honor what was while building what's next.
A: Retirement, divorce, remarriage, empty nest, relocation, career change, loss of a role or identity, becoming a parent or grandparent — and any other major shift in life's structure.
Any major shift in how you live day to day retirement, divorce, becoming a parent, an empty nest, a career change, or relocating to a new city all count. What makes a transition worth bringing into therapy isn't the size of the change on paper, it's how much it's unsettling your sense of who you are and how your life fits together.
Choosing a change doesn't protect you from grieving what it costs. Even a transition you actively wanted a new job, a move, an empty nest usually means losing a version of your routine, identity, or relationships that mattered to you. Therapy gives you room to hold both things at once: real excitement about what's ahead, and real loss for what's ending.
The focus stays specifically on the shift you're navigating what it's stirring up, what identity or roles you're renegotiating, and what the next chapter actually needs to look like for you. It's less about open-ended exploration and more about helping you move through a defined period with clarity, rather than getting stuck in it.