About Erica Murphy

While taking a mental health leave from work in August 2020, I finally realized that the life I thought I’d always wanted — the master’s degree, the leadership role, the big salary, eight years of succeeding in New York City — wasn’t what I actually wanted.

I’d accomplished everything I thought I was supposed to. Everything I thought would make me happy and fulfilled. I had the impressive job, the cute apartment, the nice salary, the color-coded calendar full of things that were supposed to mean I’d made it.

So why did it feel like I couldn’t breathe?

Each morning I’d wake up anxious, feeling like I was already behind before my feet even hit the floor. Already bargaining with myself about how many more months I could keep this up.

It took me a while to understand that it wasn’t just burnout I was experiencing (though yeah, there was a mountain of trauma in there, too). It was spiritual starvation. I was bored out of my fucking mind!

I was bored to death with my own performance — that quiet, soul-sucking, “is this it?” cocktail of guilt, resentment, stress, and obligation that slowly kills off your aliveness one checklist at a time.

Upon having this realization, I couldn’t unknow it. So I did what any responsible, high-achieving, proudly independent woman does when faced with an existential crisis that forces her to contend with the fact that she doesn’t have the answers, can’t control everything, and actually has no fucking clue what to do next.

I burned it all down 😆

Packed my shit, drained my savings, and flew back home to New Orleans with no plan except: no more of that shit.

I thought it would be a sabbatical. It turned into a reckoning.

Because when the noise stopped, I had to sit with all the versions of me I’d built to survive — the one who chased gold stars, the one who performed competency, the one who thought control equaled safety.

The Way Forward, my therapy practice, was born from this.

I made the huge decision to stop working for other people and go into business for myself - even though I had NO business training whatsoever. Because I so deeply believed that therapy should and can feel just like having a conversation with a friend - except, you know, a friend who knows shit and the conversation is actually helpful. Which is how my practice, The Way Forward, was born in January of 2021. Because I felt called to put into the world the type and quality of therapy I would want to receive for myself and I believe others deserve as well. 

I wanted therapy that didn’t feel like a dentist appointment. I wanted to talk about the real stuff: ambition, shame, control, pleasure, the weird thrill of almost-failing, the grief of outgrowing your own life. I wanted to build a space where women like me could stop pouring their energy into being good - and start letting themselves feel alive.

I knew there were people out there who were sick of the rigid, performative version of therapy — the checkbox kind that makes it feel like homework. And I knew they were looking for what I was building: something raw, grounded, irreverent, and deeply human. Therapy that feels like a conversation with a friend who actually knows what the hell she’s talking about — and isn’t afraid to go there with you.

That’s what therapy with me is.

A rebellion. A reclamation. A homecoming.

The way back to the parts of ourselves we buried to survive — and the power we didn’t realize we’d exiled right along with them.

Ready to get started? Schedule your Free 30 Minute Consultation with me now.

xx,

Erica M.