Therapy For Pregnant + Postpartum Women in San Diego, California

Specialized therapy for San Diego Moms who are done with non stop guilt, shame and survival mode.

San Diego Is Beautiful. So Why Do You Feel Like You're Disappearing?

The weather is perfect. The neighborhood is gorgeous. Your kids are healthy. Your life, by almost any measure, looks like exactly what you worked for.

And yet something is wrong — quietly, persistently, undeniably wrong — and you can't quite explain it to anyone without feeling like you'd sound ungrateful.

Maybe you're postpartum and you expected to feel relieved, joyful, finally settled — and instead you feel numb, or anxious, or like you're performing motherhood for an audience while something essential about you quietly disappears. Maybe you're still pregnant and struggling — overwhelmed by the identity shift happening in real time, anxious about birth, anxious about what comes after, wondering if it's normal to feel this untethered before the baby even arrives.

Whether you're navigating pregnancy, or you're postpartum and something feels off — this is the right place.

I'm Alexa, a licensed therapist and mother of two who works exclusively with California moms. My practice, Therapy for California Moms, is built around a single truth: that high-achieving women in beautiful places are often the least likely to ask for help, and the most likely to need it. If you're a woman in San Diego carrying more than anyone around you can see, I built this practice for you.

The "San Diego Paradox": Why It's Hard to Admit You're Struggling Here

There's something particular about struggling in a place that looks like paradise. San Diego is one of the most desirable cities in the country — the coastline, the weather, the quality of life. And that beauty comes with a silent pressure: you're supposed to be thriving here. You're supposed to have it together. You live somewhere people dream about living, so what exactly do you have to complain about?

This is what I call the San Diego Paradox, and it's one of the most common things I hear from the women I work with in this city. The external perfection of the setting makes the internal experience of struggling feel even more shameful. If you can't be happy here, what's wrong with you?

Nothing is wrong with you. Postpartum depression doesn't care how close you live to the beach. Prenatal anxiety doesn't lift just because the weather is 72 degrees. Maternal burnout doesn't discriminate based on zip code. The pressure to perform happiness in a place this beautiful is real, and it's exhausting, and it's one more invisible weight you're carrying on top of everything else.

Therapy is a place where you don't have to perform anything.

What's Actually Happening Beneath the Surface

The women I work with in San Diego are not fragile. They are some of the most capable, driven, high-functioning people I've ever met. And they have been running on empty for longer than they want to admit, held together by sheer force of will and the fear of what it would mean to admit they need support.

Here's what's often happening underneath:

The Invisible Load — not just the tasks of motherhood, but the relentless mental labor of tracking everything. Who needs what, when, from whom. The appointments, the logistics, the emotional temperature of every person in the household. The cognitive weight of being the person who holds the entire family's life in her head, all the time, with no shift that ever actually ends.

The Default Parent dynamic — even in partnerships where both people are present and engaged, one person is almost always the one the kids call for, the one the school contacts, the one who is ultimately responsible for everything. In most households, that person is you. And the cumulative weight of being everyone's primary resource, every single day, is its own form of depletion.

The Perfectionism Tax — the invisible emotional cost of maintaining a life that looks optimized from the outside while your internal experience is fraying. The energy you spend managing appearances, meeting expectations, staying on top of everything — that energy has to come from somewhere. It comes from you. And at some point, the account runs dry.

Therapy is where we actually look at all of this. Not just the symptoms, but the system that created them.

Postpartum Depression and Postpartum Anxiety in San Diego

Postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety are among the most common experiences in new motherhood — and among the most undertreated, particularly in high-achieving communities where asking for help feels like admitting defeat.

Postpartum depression doesn't always look the way it's portrayed. It can look like going through the motions. Emotional flatness. Disconnection from your baby, your partner, yourself. Irritability that feels disproportionate and then immediately fills you with guilt. A persistent sense that you're failing at something you're supposed to be naturally good at. Or simply the feeling that you've lost yourself and have no idea how to find your way back.

Postpartum anxiety often presents as something closer to hypervigilance — the inability to turn your brain off, racing thoughts about everything that could go wrong, an underlying hum of dread that follows you through every otherwise ordinary moment. It can feel like being permanently braced for impact. Like you cannot relax even when there is nothing immediate to worry about.

Both postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety respond well to therapy — especially when you work with someone who specializes in maternal mental health and actually understands what your life looks like. I am not a generalist. I work specifically with mothers, and I understand the particular pressures of motherhood in San Diego's coastal communities — the appearance-consciousness, the wellness culture, the quiet competition, the expectation that you should be able to handle all of this gracefully because you're lucky enough to live here.

Hey, I’m Alexa.

• ✨ San Diego based Licensed Therapist

• ✨ Mom of Two

• ✨ Human who has been through my own journey healing from Postpartum Depression + Anxiety

Therapy During Pregnancy: You Don't Have to Wait Until After the Baby Arrives

This is something I want to say clearly, because it doesn't get said enough: pregnancy itself is a valid reason to come to therapy. You do not have to wait until postpartum to deserve support.

Pregnancy is one of the most profound identity shifts a human being can go through. Even wanted, planned pregnancies can bring up anxiety, grief, ambivalence, fear, and a disorienting sense of losing the self you knew. Prenatal anxiety is real. Prenatal depression is real. The fear of birth is real. The worry about whether you'll be a good mother, whether your relationship will survive, whether you're making the right choices — all of it is real, and all of it is worth addressing before the baby arrives, not after.

Many of the women I work with wish they had started therapy during pregnancy rather than waiting until they were postpartum and already depleted. The transition is smoother. The tools are already in place. You arrive at the postpartum period with support rather than scrambling to find it in the hardest weeks of your life.

If you are pregnant and something doesn't feel right — whether that's prenatal anxiety, prenatal depression, fear, ambivalence, or simply the sense that you're losing yourself in the process of becoming a mother — please reach out. This is exactly the kind of work I do.

What We Work On Together

Every woman I work with comes in with her own story, but certain themes come up again and again for San Diego moms:

Postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety — including the versions that don't look like the textbook definition. The flat versions, the irritable versions, the high-functioning versions that nobody around you can see.

Prenatal anxiety and prenatal depression — for women who are currently pregnant and already struggling, or anticipating the postpartum period with dread.

Maternal burnout — the systemic depletion that comes from over-functioning for too long without adequate support or rest. This is not fixed by a weekend away. We address it at the root.

Identity reclamation — reconnecting with who you are outside of your role as a mother. Your interests, your values, your sense of self. The version of you that existed before motherhood, and the version of you that can exist alongside it.

Mom Rage — the anger that arrives disproportionately, the guilt that follows, and the nervous system underneath it all that has been running on overdrive for too long. Rage is almost always a symptom of something deeper. We find it.

Relationship strain — the way parenthood changes partnerships, creates resentment, shifts intimacy, and challenges even solid relationships in ways that are hard to talk about with the person you're in it with.

The Invisible Load and Default Parent dynamics — naming them, communicating about them, and figuring out what actually needs to change at a structural level, not just a coping level.

Why Telehealth Works So Well for San Diego Moms

My practice is fully virtual. I see clients via secure video throughout California, which means you don't add a commute to an already maxed-out day. No parking in La Jolla. No driving across town after the nap that ran long. You open your laptop, and we work.

For San Diego women specifically, this also matters geographically. Whether you're in Del Mar, Encinitas, Carlsbad, Solana Beach, Point Loma, or Coronado — you have access to a specialist without being limited to whoever happens to have an office in your zip code. The quality of care shouldn't depend on where you happen to live within the county.

Telehealth is also, for many women, easier to be honest in. You're in your own space. You're not sitting in a waiting room. You're not driving home through traffic after a hard session, trying to compose yourself before pickup. The accessibility of virtual therapy often makes the difference between a woman actually showing up for herself consistently and perpetually rescheduling because life got in the way.

What to Expect When You Work With Me

My practice is intentionally small and private-pay. I keep a limited caseload so that the care I provide is genuinely personalized — not a protocol, not a checkbox, not whatever fits into a 45-minute insurance-reimbursable slot.

My session rate is $275. I don't accept insurance, however many clients submit receipts to their insurance for potential out-of-network reimbursement, and I provide superbills to support that process.

Before we begin working together, we'll have an initial conversation to make sure we're the right fit. I take this seriously. Therapeutic fit matters enormously, and I'd rather connect you to someone better suited to your needs than move forward when the match isn't there.

San Diego Is Supposed to Feel Like Paradise. Let's Help You Actually Experience It That Way.

The women I work with are not weak. They are extraordinarily capable people who have spent years taking care of everything and everyone except themselves. Therapy is not a sign that you have failed at motherhood — it's a sign that you take your life seriously enough to invest in it.

You deserve to feel present in your own life. Not just functional. Not just surviving. Actually present — in your body, in your relationships, in the moments with your kids that are going by faster than you expected.

That's what this work is about.