POLAND — When she graduated from Gray-New Gloucester High School, Larissa Brown headed to the University of Southern Maine unsure what field she’d go in.

Two years later, working a full-time job and looking for classes she could fit in around her work, she found it.

“I ended up kind of serendipitously taking the intro to psychology class,” she said. “As soon as I took that first class, I was in love with it.”

In hindsight, it made a lot of sense.

Growing up, “I was always that person that people would come to to help them work through things,” Brown said. “All that stuff really intrigued me — why we do what we do.”

This year, Brown, 35, wound down her marriage and family therapist practice to focus on a new venture: life coaching. It has shades of therapy, but without dealing with insurance companies or having to assign a diagnosis for billing.

“Taking all the stuff I really loved about my job, but being able to have a little more autonomy,” Brown said. “I’m doing some couples work, intimate partner stuff, co-parenting, family work. There’s a lot of people out there that seek out therapy for things like work stress, just those life struggles, all those things we have to — or feel like we have to — do, and it just gets overwhelming.

“How grateful they are for the role I play in that just feels really good,” she said.

The life coaching business is still to be named, but Brown said she’ll keep up her EmpowerME trauma support group in Auburn and is also starting a new support group in Portland.

Expanding her work to southern Maine has given her even more appreciation for the area, Brown said.

“There’s so many more (clinicians in Portland), it’s really saturated with professionals,” she said. “I like that (in the Twin Cities) it’s not a big competition and nobody else feels threatened by anybody else doing their work, which is really great.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com

Larissa Brown (Photo courtesy Emmie Jones Photography)