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Something feels off. Maybe you can name it, maybe you can't. Maybe you've spent years trying to understand it and the understanding hasn't helped. Or maybe it's more immediate: something that arrived suddenly and won't let go. Either way, it's hard to explain to anyone else.
Betsy Nettleton is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with over twenty years of experience working in Chicago. She works with people who feel persistently at odds with themselves, carrying something heavy that doesn't lift, or something painful that understanding alone hasn't quite reached. Rather than focusing only on the past, she pays close attention to what's happening as it happens, both in life and in sessions. She notices the moment you lose the thread mid-sentence, the same dynamics surfacing in relationships despite your best efforts. And rather than helping you manage or avoid what's difficult, she helps you actually stay with feelings like dread, shame, or confusion, so they can be understood rather than just white knuckled through.
Over time, patterns that were hard to name become visible. That changes not just how you feel, but how you relate to others and move through your life. Symptoms may ease, but what tends to change even more fundamentally is how you experience yourself: in conversations, in relationships, in choices you make without quite realizing you're making them.
Years of Experience: 20 years
Anxiety - Sometimes anxiety is internal: worry that won't quiet, dread before ordinary situations, panic that arrives without warning. Sometimes it lives in interactions: leaving conversations unsettled, never quite sure how you came across. And sometimes it's harder to locate, it’s just a formless sense that something terrible is coming, without being able to say what.
Depression - A heaviness that doesn't lift. You go through the motions. Somehow the things that used to matter stopped mattering, and you're not even sure when that happened. Good things arrive but don't feel good, or the feeling is just gone almost as soon as it comes. Sometimes there's sadness. Often it's just bleakness, like something that used to have color has gone grey.
Sensitivity - Reactions that feel outsized, a tendency to register everything intensely, whether it is noise, physical sensation, the emotional temperature of a room. The world feels genuinely loud in ways others don't seem to notice, and nobody around you quite gets why you're so affected. There’s just not much of a buffer between you and everything coming in. It can feel like too much, and also strangely isolating, because the experience is so hard to explain to someone who doesn't have it.
Imposter syndrome - A persistent sense of not quite being yourself. You're performing. It might not even feel entirely fake, more like a version of you that's been turned up to meet what the situation requires. But there's still a waiting to be found out, and it's exhausting. There's a distance between how you feel on the inside and who you feel you have to be in the world, and a quiet longing to just be able to put that down.
Rumination - The thought or worry you can't stop returning to. The conversation you keep replaying. Or maybe the conviction that if you just think about it a little more you'll finally figure it out. Rumination is often an attempt to control something that feels uncontrollable, or to resolve something that just won't resolve, because not knowing feels unbearable.
Relationship issues - So much of what makes life feel meaningful happens in relationships. But relationships can also be a source of tremendous pain. The same patterns keep showing up: with partners, family, friends. You find yourself in situations you didn't choose and can't quite get out of. You want something from people but can't quite say what that might be. Or, you feel alone, even when you're not.
This provider can support you in getting reimbursement from your insurance company if you are seeking out-of-network reimbursement. Here are the out-of-network billing options they provide:
Frequency of sessions this provider offers to see clients once you are an established client.
I am in-network for Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO. This means I am in-network for all state Blue Cross Blue Shield plans if they are PPO plans.
The practice will call you for a free 10 minute phone call to discuss your needs and ensure a match!
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