Postpartum Therapist for Moms in Santa Monica, CA
Support For Pregnant + Postpartum Moms Trying To Figure Out How To Care For Themselves in Pregnancy and Motherhood ✨
Santa Monica has a particular energy that is hard to explain to people who haven't lived it. It's health-conscious and creative, ambitious and community-forward, progressive in its values and relentless in its standards. From the quiet residential streets north of Montana Avenue to the fast-moving tech and entertainment culture of Silicon Beach, this is a place where high-achieving women are expected to do everything — build careers, raise children, maintain relationships, tend to their bodies and their homes and their social lives — and make it look like none of it costs them anything.
It costs them everything.
I'm Alexa — a licensed therapist, a mother of two, and a specialist in the maternal mental health of California women. I work virtually with moms across Santa Monica, the Westside, and greater Los Angeles who are navigating postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, the Invisible Load, and the specific exhaustion of being the Default Parent in a culture that never stops demanding more from you.
If you have found yourself wondering why you feel so depleted in the middle of a life that looks, from the outside, like everything you worked for — this page is for you.
Beyond the Westside Performance
There is a particular kind of high-functioning burnout that thrives on the Westside. It doesn't announce itself. It doesn't look like falling apart — it looks like pilates at 6am, a full work calendar, a beautifully fed baby, and a smile at the farmers market on Arizona Avenue. It looks like you having it together.
Inside, it feels like running on fumes while performing energy you don't have. It feels like snapping at your partner after the kids are in bed and then lying awake hating yourself for it. It feels like the joy everyone told you you'd feel after having a baby somehow hasn't fully arrived, and you don't know if that makes you broken or just honest.
This is the Invisible Load in full effect. It is not just the tasks — the feeding schedules, the pediatrician appointments, the childcare logistics, the mental inventory of what everyone in your household needs before they know they need it. It is the relentless cognitive labor of being the person who holds the whole structure together, invisibly, while also being expected to show up fully everywhere else. In Santa Monica, where the bar for what a mother is supposed to look like is exceptionally high, the weight of that load is carried quietly and often alone.
You are not failing. Your nervous system is overwhelmed. That is a clinical reality, not a character flaw.
What Postpartum Depression Looks Like in Santa Monica
Postpartum depression does not look the same in every woman — and in high-achieving, professionally accomplished women, it rarely looks the way it's described in pamphlets.
In Santa Monica, postpartum depression often looks like showing up to your production meeting or your VC call and performing competence flawlessly — and then driving home feeling hollow and not knowing why. It looks like loving your baby and simultaneously feeling disconnected from them, which generates a layer of guilt so heavy it becomes its own weight to carry. It looks like irritability, or numbness, or a persistent low-grade sense that something is fundamentally wrong with you — when in reality, something is happening in your brain chemistry that has a name and a treatment and is not your fault.
Postpartum depression in this population also hides behind busyness. If you are still functioning — still managing the household, still hitting your deliverables, still maintaining the social calendar — it can be easy to convince yourself that what you're experiencing doesn't count as postpartum depression. It counts. Postpartum depression does not require you to be non-functional to be real and to be serious.
It can also surface as postpartum rage — an intensity of anger that feels disproportionate and frightening, particularly when it's directed at the people you love most. Mom Rage is not a personality defect. It is frequently a symptom of a nervous system that has been in survival mode for too long without adequate support.
Postpartum depression is treatable. The sooner it is addressed with specialized clinical support, the sooner you start feeling like yourself again.
What Postpartum Anxiety Looks Like in Santa Monica
Postpartum anxiety is often one of the most under diagnosed perinatal mood disorder, and it is extraordinarily common among high-conscientiousness, high-achieving women — which is most of the mothers I work with on the Westside.
Postpartum anxiety looks like this: a background threat assessment running at all times. Catastrophic thinking about your baby's safety that you cannot turn off. The compulsion to control every variable because your nervous system is convinced that if you stop managing everything, something terrible will happen. Waking at 2am with your heart racing over something you can't quite name. Feeling judged by your parents or in-laws for not appearing more at ease with motherhood — when internally you are doing everything in your power just to stay regulated.
In a culture as achievement-oriented as Santa Monica's, postpartum anxiety often masquerades as conscientiousness for a long time before anyone — including you — recognizes it as anxiety. The hypervigilance feels familiar. It's the same cognitive drive that made you effective in your career. But there is a meaningful clinical difference between high standards and a nervous system that cannot find its way back to baseline.
Postpartum anxiety is not a personality trait. It is a clinical pattern with effective, evidence-based treatment. You do not have to keep managing it alone, and you do not have to keep performing calm when you are anything but.
What Postpartum Therapy Actually Looks Like
This is not a practice where we sit in a circle of feelings for fifty minutes and you leave with a breathing exercise. My approach is clinical, direct, and built around results.
In our work together, we start by getting a precise picture of what is actually happening — in your nervous system, in your identity, in your relationship, in the Invisible Load you are carrying. From there, we build a concrete framework tailored to your specific life and your specific presentation of postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety.
We work on neural regulation — moving your nervous system out of chronic survival mode and back toward responsive calm. We work on identity — recovering the sense of self that has been steadily consumed by the Default Parent role. And we work on the relational dynamics that the Mental Load creates, including the resentment that builds when one partner carries the invisible infrastructure of a family while the other moves through life largely unburdened by it.
This is effective, customized clinical work. It moves.
Hey, I’m Alexa.
✨ Licensed Therapist
✨ Mom of Two
✨ Human who has been through my own journey healing from Postpartum Depression + Anxiety
Why Virtual Therapy Is the Right Choice for Santa Monica Moms
Your recovery should not require you to fight the 10 or the 405 to get to a therapist's office. My practice is 100% virtual — which means we meet wherever you are, whether that's your home office, your car during nap time, or your living room after the kids are down.
Virtual therapy is not a compromise. For women navigating the pace of Westside life, it is the only model that actually works. You get access to a specialist in maternal mental health without adding another commute, another transition, another logistical piece to the Invisible Load.
I maintain a small, intentionally limited caseload. Every client receives a level of clinical attention and continuity that a high-volume practice cannot offer.
About Me
I'm Alexa — a licensed therapist based in California, a mother of two, and someone who has navigated my own experience with postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety. I know what it feels like to be the person holding everything together while quietly running on empty. I know the particular weight of being surrounded by a community that expects you to look like you're thriving when you are anything but.
My clinical approach is grounded in over 5,000 hours of experience working with women in high-pressure environments across California. I specialize in maternal mental health — postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, the Invisible Load, Mom Rage, and the identity erosion that happens when the Default Parent role slowly consumes the woman who existed before children. My work is direct, results-oriented, and designed for women who don't have time for vague or meandering therapy.
I understand the Westside. The creative industries, the tech culture, the wellness-forward environment that somehow still makes it feel like you're falling short. You don't need to spend our sessions explaining your context. I already understand it.
The Investment
Sessions are $275. I am an out-of-network provider. Many clients in Santa Monica and across the Westside use their PPO out-of-network benefits and receive meaningful reimbursement directly from their insurance. I provide the documentation you need to submit your claim.
This is a private-pay practice because insurance-driven care is not built for the depth of work we do here. The focus is entirely on your results, your nervous system, and your recovery — not on what a billing code allows.
-
FAQ: Postpartum Therapy in Santa Monica and the Westside
Do you work with moms in Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Venice, and Malibu? Yes. I work virtually with women across the entire Westside, including Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Venice, Marina del Rey, Culver City, and Malibu.
What is postpartum depression and how do I know if I have it? Postpartum depression is a clinical mood disorder that can begin during pregnancy or after giving birth. It goes well beyond the baby blues — it is persistent, disruptive, and does not resolve on its own with rest or time. In high-achieving women, postpartum depression often presents as numbness, disconnection, persistent guilt, rage, or a sense of going through the motions without being present in your own life. If you have been feeling this way for more than two weeks, that is worth taking seriously. A clinical consultation is the fastest way to get clarity.
What is postpartum anxiety and is it different from postpartum depression? Yes — postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety are distinct conditions, though they frequently co-occur. Postpartum anxiety typically presents as chronic worry, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, and a nervous system that cannot come down from high alert. Postpartum depression more often presents as numbness, sadness, disconnection, or identity loss. Both are treatable and both deserve specialized clinical attention.
How do you address the Invisible Load in therapy? The Invisible Load — the mental architecture of running a family that lives entirely in your head — is central to the work I do. In therapy, we identify how it is affecting your nervous system and your sense of self, build strategies for redistributing it within your relationship, and work on protecting your own mental space from being completely consumed by the Default Parent role.
I feel judged by my parents and in-laws for struggling. Is that common? Extremely common. Many of the women I work with carry an additional layer of shame around seeking support, particularly when family members hold the view that postpartum struggles are something to push through privately. Part of what we address in therapy is untangling your wellbeing from the expectations of people who don't understand what you are actually experiencing. You do not owe anyone a performance of fine.
How do I get started? Book your first session directly through my website. We'll begin with a focused intake to understand the full picture of what you're navigating, and build a treatment approach specific to you from there.
Book your first session today!