A therapist’s guide to surviving any setback: After battling cancer twice, a car accident and weathering years of financial hardship as a single mother, MARISA PEER is thriving today – and it’s all thanks to this strategy

Looking at Marisa Peer today, it is easy to see a picture of complete fulfilment. At 69, the world-renowned therapist is happy, successful, has ‘a lot of money’ and recently welcomed her second grandchild.

However, behind the polished exterior she’s been through intense personal challenges: surviving cancer twice, enduring a horrific car accident and weathering years of severe financial hardship as a single mother.

As such, her approach isn’t built on theory. Rather, her tools have been tested in the trenches of her own life. Here, Ms Peer shares her advice for overcoming major setbacks.

SETBACK 1: Career rejection

Ms Peer knows career paths rarely follow a straight line. Long before building her therapy empire, she considered teaching, and trained in child psychology before pivoting to work as an aerobics instructor for Jane Fonda in Los Angeles. Eventually she studied clinical hypnotherapy – and discovered her true calling.

Many women struggle with job rejections, or with the overwhelming pressure of balancing ambition with family life. When faced with a career wall, Ms Peer suggests first looking back to your early, authentic interests.

‘If you wanted to be a teacher but the system doesn’t work for your family life, you might become a teacher’s assistant, a private tutor or a mentor. If a corporate role isn’t flexible enough, your skills might be the exact foundation needed to start your own business.’

As for rejection, ‘when you hit a wall in your career, the instinct is to assume you aren’t good enough,’ Peer explains. ‘Instead, treat rejection as redirection.’

Rather than viewing your past jobs as wasted time, Ms Peer sees them as essential building blocks. ‘Allow yourself the grace to let your career evolve,‘ she says. ‘Your value isn’t tied to a single job title – it‘s tied to the unique skills you bring to whatever you choose to do next.’

SETBACK 2: Infertility

Told at age 17 that she had severe hormonal issues and would ‘never have a baby’, Peer faced a barrier that leaves many feeling hopeless. Yet, she refused to accept the doctor’s words, believing that by some means she would eventually become a mother, and went on to conceive naturally.

When fertility struggles or major life plans fall apart, Ms Peer warns against adopting a mindset that constantly checks for defeat. ‘When you go to IVF, they’ll often say you have a 25 per cent success rate, which you will hear as a 75 per cent failure rate,’ she notes.

Ms Peer advises actively cultivating physical expectation, because she believes the brain sets a template for the body. ‘Every day, your brain tells your body what to do. So you’ve got to tell it, “I am making a baby”.‘

But we all know that’s not guaranteed to work – you can’t just think yourself pregnant! So what then? ‘It’s terribly sad,’ Peer acknowledges. ‘But there are always ways to have children in your life.’ As a positive step forward, she advises pivoting toward alternative ways of connecting with kids – whether that means mentoring, court advocacy (which Ms Peer has done), fostering or sponsoring a child in need. ‘You have to reframe it, because the desire to care and give love doesn’t just disappear – you just have to find a different path to express it.’

SETBACK 3: Financial distress

Before achieving success, Ms Peer found herself raising her daughter alone while mortgage interest rates tripled. Though finances were extremely tight, she refused to feel poor. Instead, she frequented car boot sales and charity shops to buy second-hand toys, reframing the experience into something positive.

Ms Peer is quick to clarify that maintaining an ‘abundant mindset’ isn’t about ignoring the harsh realities of rising costs, nor is it a magical fix for unpaid bills. However, when money is tight, the brain naturally defaults to panic and scarcity – constantly repeating phrases like ‘I can’t afford it’, which only reinforces a state of helplessness.

By consciously shifting how you talk about your situation and focusing on the areas where you are wealthy – in health or love, for example – you prevent financial stress from stripping away your self-worth. As Ms Peer puts it: ‘You can have less and be incredibly joyful, or you can have more and be miserable. Having a wealthy state of mind isn’t about your bank balance; it’s about refusing to let money problems rob you of your daily peace and resourcefulness.’

SETBACK 4: Health crises

When physical disaster strikes, the brain naturally gravitates toward panic. After being hit in the leg by a trader’s van on Portobello Road, west London, in December 2022, Ms Peer was dragged underneath and faced initial fears of severe long-term damage. Yet, where others might succumb to panic, she immediately put her core philosophy to work: mentally visualising the bones in her leg knitting together to accelerate her body’s natural healing timeline.

Her response to cancer was equally pragmatic. Diagnosed with womb cancer at 50 and colon cancer at 52, Ms Peer refused to view her situation as a tragic death sentence. Instead, she actively chose to look on the bright side, reframing the illness by maintaining that she was extraordinarily “lucky“ her diagnoses involved organs that could simply be surgically removed.

‘One of the things I understood from being a therapist for a long time is that you’re defined by what you let in,’ Ms Peer explains.

When facing scary or severe diagnoses – even late-stage conditions where a quick bounce-back feels impossible – Ms Peer insists that finding active ways to participate in your recovery is critical. ’The biggest thing, weirdly, is to visualise yourself getting well. It might sound woo-woo, but your psychology is talking to your biology every single day.’

SETBACK 5: Loss

Everyone will experience grief. Ms Peer is no exception, having navigated the loss of both parents three months apart when she was 59, her best friend three years ago and painful ends to relationships and a pregnancy at 47.

To move through bereavement without becoming trapped in despair, she champions a shift in perspective: focusing on the immense joy of having had someone in your life. When her own parents passed away, Ms Peer said she eventually managed to reframe her grief around gratitude.

Ms Peer acknowledges this becomes infinitely harder when a death is sudden or inherently tragic. Pointing to her friend, the former Google CBO Mo Gawdat – who lost his 21-year-old son, Ali, to a preventable medical error – she notes that some bereavements test the limits of human resilience.

Yet even in the wake of terrible tragedy, she says Mr Gawdat was able to find a mindset that aided his healing. ‘When Mo lost his son, he said, “I had 21 glorious years with my son, and I choose to focus on the joy of having had him rather than the pain of losing him,”’ Ms Peer explains. ‘Reframing isn’t about denying the tragedy – it’s about making sure the awful way someone died doesn’t erase the incredible joy of how they lived.’

Ultimately, Ms Peer’s guide to navigating life’s darkest chapters comes down to taking active ownership of how you interpret every hardship. Circumstances, diagnoses, financial strain and sudden losses may land unexpectedly, but your internal narrative remains entirely within your control. ‘It’s never the thing. It’s how you frame the thing, and how you frame things is one thing you can change,’ Ms Peer maintains. ‘When you change the language you use during a crisis, you change the blueprint—and your life has no choice but to follow.’