You've held it all together. Perimenopause is asking you to stop.
For capable, over-functioning women whose old ways of coping (push through, stay busy, handle it) are starting to crack. Together we tend the parts of you that have carried everything, so you can begin healing your nervous system.
Coaching for women anywhere · Online therapy in Minnesota · Kimberly Knoll, LMFT, IFS Level 1 trained
You're the capable one, and lately, being capable is becoming too much.
This is a threshold, not a breakdown.
The strategies that carried you this far were working. The part of you that pushes through, the one that stays busy, the one who handles it: each learned to keep you and everyone else safe.
Perimenopause changes the body those strategies run on. When the masks that worked before start to come off, it isn't evidence that you're broken. It's an invitation to meet those parts with curiosity instead of criticism, and to find the steadier Self underneath which has been wanting to come out all along.
You don't need fewer feelings. You need a nervous system rooted in Self-energy, one that can move through all of it without getting stuck.
Clinical depth, earth-based wisdom, and a respect for rhythm and season.
Rooted in trauma-informed Internal Family Systems (IFS), a model that sees you as an inner world to be known, not a problem to be solved. We go at the pace of your nervous system to heal your nervous system.
Meet the over-functioners
Get to know the parts that keep everything running, with compassion, and help them set down whatever they no longer have to carry.
Build capacity in the body
Learn to feel, rest, and respond rather than react, even when sleep and hormones are shifting the ground beneath you.
Return to inner knowing
Reconnect with the steady Self underneath, so your choices come from Self rather than survival.
Honor the passage
Treat this season of life as a meaningful and beautiful passage, connected to your body, your lineage, and the earth, not a problem to fix.
Two ways in, depending on where you live and what you need.
The Threshold
A focused, private container for over-functioning women in perimenopause who want to stop managing themselves and start understanding themselves.
- 12 sessions over 3 months (weekly or biweekly + integration)
- Parts mapping: meet your inner manager, critic, and exhausted caretaker
- Nervous-system capacity practices tied to your own cycles and seasons
- Email support between sessions
Individual Therapy
Trauma-informed therapy with an IFS trained Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, for when you want clinical care for anxiety, trauma, or relationship patterns alongside this transition.
- Licensed to see clients located in Minnesota
- I am an out-of-network provider and do not bill insurance directly.
- Upon request, I can provide a superbill — a detailed receipt you may submit to your insurance company or HSA for possible out-of-network reimbursement.
The Over-Functioner's Field Guide to Perimenopause
Five short IFS practices for the moments when holding it all together starts to feel like too much. Delivered by email, one each day, with a 5-minute audio from Kim.
- Name the part that's over-functioning
- The 90-second pause before you react
- Turn toward the overwhelming feeling
- Learn what cycles mean for the earth and for women
- Ask your true Self what this season needs
I know this terrain from the inside.
I spent years as the capable one: people pleasing, overriding my own signals, believing something was fundamentally wrong with me. IFS gave me a different story. The people pleaser wasn't the problem. She was a part, exhausted and loyal, doing her best.
Now I work with women at the threshold of perimenopause, the moment when the coping strategies that once worked stop working. I bring clinical depth alongside earth-based wisdom, the garden, and the understanding that healing is relational, cyclical, and never linear.
This work is my own tending too.
Before you reach out
What's the difference between coaching and therapy?
Therapy is clinical care: assessment, diagnosis where appropriate, and treatment of mental health concerns. It's available to clients located in Minnesota. Coaching is forward-focused, non-clinical support using IFS-informed practices, and is available to women anywhere. On our consultation call we'll find which is the better fit.
Do I need to know my hormones are the cause?
No. Many women arrive before anyone has said the word perimenopause. I don't provide medical care; I'm glad to work alongside your doctor or a menopause-informed clinician, and can share resources for finding one.
What is IFS, in plain language?
Internal Family Systems sees the mind as made up of parts: the one who pushes, the one who criticizes, the one who's exhausted. None of them are bad. Underneath them is a calm, curious Self. The work is helping those parts trust Self enough to let go of the jobs they've been stuck in.
Is this right for me if I'm in crisis?
This work isn't designed for acute crisis. If you're in immediate danger, call or text 988. If you need more intensive support, I'm happy to help you find the right fit.
A conversation costs nothing.
If something here landed, that's worth paying attention to. We'll talk for 20 minutes, with no pressure and no commitment, to see whether this feels like the right fit.
- kim@knollcounseling.com
- 612-361-9335
- Free 20-minute consultation · Online