Specialized Therapy For Pregnant + Postpartum Women in Sherman Oaks, CA ✨

Motherhood isn’t supposed to break you — yet between the sleepless nights, the crushing mental load, and the guilt of never feeling ‘enough,’ it can feel like you’re unraveling.

Therapy is where you can finally lay it all down, be seen without judgment, and start putting the pieces back together in a way that actually feels whole.

You’re running on fumes. You’re doing everything — holding the household together, raising your kids, possibly managing a career — and somewhere in the middle of all of it, you lost yourself. I want you to know: that’s not a personal failing. That’s what happens when a person carries too much for too long without adequate support.

Hi, I’m Alexa, I’m a mom of two, licensed therapist and founder of Therapy For California Moms. I specialize in maternal mental health, and I work with moms across California — including Sherman Oaks. Whether you’re navigating pregnancy, or you’re postpartum and something feels off — this is the right place. My virtual practice means you can access real, clinical support from your living room, your car, or wherever you can steal twenty quiet minutes.

Sherman Oaks moms are doing a lot. This is a neighborhood where ambition runs high and expectations — of yourself especially — run even higher. The pressure to parent well, work hard, keep a beautiful home, stay connected in your relationship, and never visibly fall apart? I hear it from clients all the time. That pressure is real. And so is the exhaustion underneath it.

What I Treat: Postpartum Depression, Postpartum Anxiety & More

My practice is built around one focus: the mental health of mothers. I work with women across the full perinatal arc — from early pregnancy through the years after birth. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Postpartum Depression

Postpartum depression doesn’t always look like crying. Sometimes it looks like going through the motions. Feeling like a stranger in your own life. Wondering why you don’t feel the way you thought you would. If you’ve been disconnected, flat, or just not yourself since having your baby — even if your baby is no longer a baby — postpartum depression may be part of what’s happening. It’s more common than most people realize, and it’s treatable. You don’t have to white-knuckle your way through this.

Postpartum Anxiety

For many moms, postpartum anxiety shows up as a brain that won’t quiet down. The catastrophic what-ifs. The hypervigilance. The sense that something terrible is always about to happen and you’re the only one standing between your child and it. Postpartum anxiety is exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain to people who haven’t felt it — because from the outside, you look fine. In therapy, we work to interrupt those patterns at the root, not just manage them on the surface.

Prenatal Anxiety & Prenatal Depression

Pregnancy is supposed to be a joyful time — but for a lot of women, it’s also a time of intense anxiety, mood shifts, and identity disruption. Prenatal anxiety and prenatal depression are real clinical presentations, and they often go unaddressed because everyone’s focused on the physical pregnancy. I work with women who are pregnant and struggling — whether that means fear about the birth, complicated feelings about becoming a mother, relationship stress, or just a profound sense of not being okay despite “having everything.” This is the right place for that too.

Mom Rage

Mom rage is one of the most stigmatized and least talked-about experiences in motherhood. It’s the flash of white-hot anger over something small — the spilled cup, the ignored request, the one more thing — and then the shame spiral that follows. Mom rage isn’t a character flaw. It’s almost always a signal: your nervous system is maxed out, your needs have been last on the list for too long, and something in you is finally refusing to be ignored. In therapy, we figure out what’s driving it — and build something more sustainable.

Maternal Burnout, the Invisible Load & the Default Parent

The Invisible Load is the mental and emotional labor of running a family that nobody sees and nobody thanks you for: tracking everyone’s appointments, anticipating what’s needed before it’s needed, being the person who remembers everything. When you’re also the Default Parent — the one the kids come to first, the one who’s always on call — that load compounds fast. Maternal burnout is what happens when it’s been too much for too long. If you’re depleted, resentful, and running on autopilot, we can work on that.

Identity Reclamation & the “Who Am I Now?” Question

Motherhood changes you in ways nobody fully prepares you for. A lot of high-achieving women come to me saying some version of: “I used to know who I was. I don’t know anymore.” The woman you were before kids is still in there — but she’s been buried under years of putting everyone else first. Therapy can be the space where you start to excavate her again. That’s work I find deeply meaningful.

Hey, I’m Alexa.

• ✨ Licensed Therapist

• ✨ Mom of Two

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

Why Sherman Oaks Moms Are a Good Fit for This Work

Sherman Oaks sits in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, and it attracts a particular kind of woman: driven, capable, someone who figured out a long time ago how to get things done. Maybe you’re in entertainment, tech, finance, or running your own business. Maybe you have a partner, maybe you’re doing this solo. Either way, you’re used to being competent — which is exactly why the struggle feels so disorienting. You’re not supposed to be someone who can’t handle it. Except nobody can handle everything, forever, without support.

I work well with women who are thoughtful, self-aware enough to know something is off, and skeptical enough to want a therapist who meets them at their level — not one who just nods and says “how does that make you feel?” My approach is warm but direct. I’m not going to waste your time with vague encouragement. We’re going to figure out what’s actually happening and build something real.

The Perfectionism Tax is something I talk about often with clients in communities like Sherman Oaks. It’s the cost of living by standards so high that nothing is ever quite enough — including yourself as a mother. You can be doing a genuinely good job and still feel like you’re failing. Therapy is a place to examine where those standards came from, whether they’re actually serving you, and what it would look like to set them down.

How Virtual Therapy Works (And Why It’s Ideal for Moms)

My practice is 100% virtual, which means no commute across the 405, no parking, no arranging childcare just to sit in a waiting room. Sessions happen over secure video and they fit into your real life — not a theoretical version of your life where you have three free hours every week. A lot of my clients are doing sessions from their cars in the school pickup line or from a quiet corner of their home office. That’s completely fine. What matters is that you show up.

Sessions are $275 and I’m an out-of-network provider. I don’t bill insurance directly, but I provide superbills so you can submit for reimbursement depending on your plan. There are no free consultations — we start working from the very first session. This is a private-pay practice designed for women who are ready to invest in themselves and want focused, high-quality clinical support.

When you book your first session, you’ll fill out a brief intake so I can come prepared. We’ll spend that first session understanding where you are, what’s been happening, and what you actually want to be different. From there, we build a plan that makes sense for you — not a generic protocol.

What to Expect When You Work With Me

Here’s what I want you to know before you book: I’m not going to tell you to take bubble baths and practice gratitude. That’s not therapy. Real therapy is harder than that — and more worthwhile. In our work together, you can expect:

• A clinician who actually reads your intake and comes prepared, not someone who starts from scratch every session.

• Direct, honest feedback — delivered with warmth, not judgment.

• A framework for understanding what’s actually driving your symptoms — not just coping strategies layered on top of unaddressed pain.

• Space to be honest about the parts of motherhood you don’t post about.

• Progress that you can actually feel — not just insight without change.

Ready to Book Your First Session?

If any part of this page felt like it was written for you — that’s not a coincidence. I wrote it for you. For the Sherman Oaks mom who’s holding it together on the outside while something feels deeply wrong on the inside. For the woman who Googled “postpartum depression therapy near me” at midnight and then closed the tab three times before finally clicking.

You deserve support that actually works. You deserve a space that’s entirely yours — where you’re not the caretaker, the manager, or the one holding everyone else together. Just you, doing the work that helps you feel like yourself again.

Book your first session today. I’d love to support you during this season of Motherhood!