Premium Evening & Late-Night Therapy for Adults in Chicago, IL and Boston, MA

Stop proving your worth. Start owning your peace.

Heal from family dysfunction, break destructive cycles, and move from constantly striving to deeply belonging.

You’ve spent your life proving you are enough. You excel at work, but behind the scenes, you are exhausted by people-pleasing, romantic struggles, and the quiet ache of unworthiness.

If you grew up with family dysfunction, you likely learned to manage everyone else’s emotions at the expense of your own. You may over-function just to feel seen. But when the pressure and anxiety become too heavy, you might find yourself slipping into survival mode—mindlessly scrolling social media, binge-watching TV, isolating from loved ones, or relying on alcohol or other substances just to numb the discomfort.

This constant cycling between over-performing and emotional numbing isn’t a personal failure—it is a survival strategy that has outlived its usefulness. When you grow up in an environment where love is conditional or inconsistent and emotional safety is scarce, people-pleasing and over-functioning can become second nature. However, the exact mechanisms that kept you safe in childhood are now keeping you disconnected from yourself and trapped in exhausting relationship patterns as an adult.

How We Work Together

1. Discover the Origin
• Unpack your upbringing. See exactly how your childhood shapes the way you relate to yourself, your work, and your relationships today.

2. Recognize Survival Patterns
• Honor your past adaptations. Acknowledge the ways you learned to protect yourself as a child.
• Cultivate deep internal safety. Build the internal security you need to break destructive cycles and prove to yourself that it is safe to do things differently.

3. Mourn the Past
• Grieve what was missing. Give yourself permission to mourn the unconditional love, attunement, validation, and support you deserved but didn’t receive.
• Connect with your inner child. Learn how to show up for that younger part of yourself so you can navigate life as your most mature, healed self—instead of letting your past wounds run the show.

4. Break the Habits
• Evolve past survival mode. Shift away from behaviors that keep you trapped in old, undesirable patterns.
• Live with intention. Reconnect with your authentic self, reclaim your inherent self-worth, and make value-aligned choices to build a life you love.

Led by founder and psychotherapist Mary Ann Cleary, LCSW, CADC, this is a space to heal childhood attachment wounds, step away from old survival patterns, and make the authentic choices needed to build a life where your worth is never up for debate.

Up Late Therapy exclusively offers online evening and late-night appointments to accommodate your busy daytime schedule.

While most therapists wrap up by 6:00 or 7:00 pm, Mary Ann provides flexible scheduling tailored to busy professionals, night owls, and overstretched parents residing in Illinois or Massachusetts, including the Chicago and Boston regions. Whether you need an evening slot or a late-night session, Mary Ann is here to support you. Reach out today for a free 15-minute consultation!