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Case Study: Thomas Is No Longer Afraid Of Interpersonal Conflict
2025-10-30

Thomas is a computer scientist and an entrepreneur. He worked with me 1-on-1 for a year. For privacy reasons, Thomas’s last name has been omitted, but his story and experiences are shared here with his full permission.

What made you want to work with Larissa?
When I first started working with Larissa, I was struggling with various kinds of interpersonal conflicts. I think in particular, I was struggling the most with my own tendencies to please people and to seek approval. I wasn't feeling secure about expressing my needs, expressing my ideas and conflicts. And that had taken a very heavy toll on my leadership role at the company I’d co-founded.

What was your biggest hesitation?
I wasn't sure about the prospect of me actually fixing these issues because they have been with me for a very long time. Over many years, I have sought help in different forms and I felt like I didn't really get to the bottom of it. I wasn’t sure if these sessions that I would be doing with Larissa would change things significantly.

What specific results have you achieved?
Since working with Larissa, I have become much more capable of handling interpersonal conflicts, both at work and in my personal life.

“I’ve become much more comfortable standing up for my needs and desires, my beliefs and my opinions in heated situations, where there are loaded emotions and complicated feelings and challenging language being exchanged.”

Besides, I have also observed a heightened awareness towards myself – awareness towards my own feelings, my thoughts, my thought processes and patterns, and my underlying beliefs. Ultimately, I am now more of a master of my internal reality. That's a very empowered kind of feeling.

What was the experience like?
I have realized that coming out of various practices and frameworks and lessons in sessions with Larissa that: • I can change my underlying beliefs • that I can be in control • that I can change how I handle difficult situations The most helpful thing that I took away was a combination of two things: self compassion and the idea of boundaries. Coming from an Asian background, I can say that boundaries, in my upbringing and in the culture that I grew up in, weren’t really a thing. From these sessions with Larissa, what I realized is that if I get to set a healthy boundary, I then get to be responsible for what's on my side of the fence. I get to be responsible, and I am responsible, for my own thought process, my own feelings, my beliefs which are driving my behavior. And that's a very empowered kind of feeling, because I get to accept them as where I stand in terms of my internal reality and I get to choose how I would think differently next time going into similar situations and that ultimately drives change. Self-compassion comes in here in the sense of being compassionate with myself, being accepting, being inquisitive, being curious, without blaming, without judging, with a lot of patience, with a lot of acceptance. That's the key to driving real change.

What would have happened if you hadn’t worked with Larissa?
I want to state that counterfactuals are tricky but I would say that if I didn't work with Larissa, it is plausible that I am still struggling with the same set of issues. I will be still going into interpersonal conflicts and heated situations and still be using my old ways of dealing with people and expressing myself, which are problematic and not exactly problem solving in getting the ball rolling. And I do not envy that person. I could not imagine myself wanting to be in that version of the universe. I would very much rather that I had worked with Larissa. I have experienced these changes. And I am now walking as a new person doing things differently, and feeling much, much better and in control.

Do you recommend working with Larissa?
I think you should work with Larissa if, speaking from my own experience, you're having similar issues that I had before. Issues such as, you would find yourself going into interpersonal conflicts where there are things at stake that are really important to you and you find yourself walking out of the interaction not expressing what you really wanted to express, what you really believed in. Moreover, you would be judging yourself harshly. You would find yourself generally practicing a pretty heavy filter on what you say and what you would not say, policing yourself really hard, pushing yourself really hard. And then over time, maybe you realize that that's no longer serving you, you don't exactly know why you do it but you can't help but do it, and you also don't know how to change it. I have experienced fundamental changes and I would recommend working with Larissa if you have similar kinds of issues that I had.

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