Reproductive & Women’s Mental Health Therapy in New York & California

Reproductive and hormonal life stages can bring profound emotional, physical, and relational shifts. These transitions are often intense, complex, and deeply personal—yet frequently minimized or misunderstood. Experiences related to pregnancy, postpartum, menopause, and major parenthood-related decisions can shape mood, nervous system regulation, identity, and connection in ways that are not always anticipated. Therapy offers a grounded space to explore these experiences with care and nuance. If you’re seeking reproductive and women’s mental health therapy in New York or California, the information below is intended to help you understand whether this support aligns with what you’re navigating.

  • Shanti: inner peace

  • Bhāvanā: mental insight

  • Karuṇā: guided healing

Baby Hands

Reproductive-Related Anxiety and Depression

Emotional changes during pregnancy and the postpartum period are often casually referred to as the “baby blues,” a phrase that significantly understates the depth and complexity of what many people experience. While brief mood fluctuations can be a normal response to hormonal and life changes, anxiety and depression related to reproduction and early parenthood are more nuanced, longer-lasting, and more impactful than this label suggests.

Mood and anxiety symptoms connected to pregnancy and postpartum life affect a significant portion of individuals and can emerge at different points—during pregnancy, shortly after birth, or months later. These experiences are shaped by hormonal shifts, nervous system changes, identity transitions, relational dynamics, and the realities of caring for a child. For some, anxiety symptoms may be more prominent; for others, depression, emotional numbness, or a sense of disconnection may take center stage. Often, both coexist.

Postpartum Anxiety

Anxiety related to pregnancy and postpartum life can take many forms, including persistent worry, intrusive thoughts, panic, hypervigilance, or obsessive patterns. While some degree of concern about birth, safety, and caregiving is expected, it can become difficult to discern when anxiety has moved beyond protective concern and into something that feels overwhelming or consuming.

Therapy offers a space to explore these experiences without judgment—helping you understand what your anxiety is responding to, how it’s affecting your nervous system, and how to restore a greater sense of steadiness and trust during a period of profound change.

Postpartum Depression

Depression in the context of pregnancy and postpartum life is often complicated by cultural expectations that new parents should feel joyful, fulfilled, and instinctively capable. When lived experience does not match this narrative, feelings of guilt, shame, or isolation can deepen depressive symptoms.

Postpartum depression may include persistent sadness, hopelessness, emotional numbness, fatigue, difficulty bonding, or a loss of connection to oneself or others. Navigating identity shifts, changing relationships, and the demands of caregiving can take time and support. Therapy provides space to process these transitions, address underlying emotional patterns, and reconnect with yourself in a way that feels compassionate and sustainable.

Depression Therapy Support

Support for persistent sadness, emotional numbness, low motivation, fatigue, burnout, loss of interest or pleasure, negative thinking patterns, and depression that co-occurs with anxiety. Depression therapy can help identify the emotional, relational, and nervous system dynamics that contribute to depressive patterns—while supporting reconnection, internal movement, and a greater sense of engagement with life.

Special Focus Areas

While reproductive and hormonal mental health experiences are deeply personal, certain patterns commonly emerge during pregnancy, postpartum, and other reproductive life stages. Therapy may be helpful if you are experiencing:

Ongoing feelings of heaviness, tearfulness, or emotional pain that feel out of proportion, unfamiliar, or difficult to shake during reproductive or hormonal transitions.

A sense of feeling flat, distant, or disconnected from yourself, your body, your relationships, or your role—often emerging during or after significant identity shifts.

Heightened worry, intrusive thoughts, hypervigilance, or panic related to health, safety, caregiving, or the future.

Physical and emotional exhaustion that goes beyond typical tiredness, often shaped by hormonal shifts, caregiving demands, and sustained stress without adequate recovery.

A reduced sense of enjoyment or engagement in relationships, activities, or experiences that once felt meaningful—sometimes accompanied by guilt or confusion about “how you should feel.”

Harsh self-judgment, feelings of inadequacy, or a loss of confidence connected to changes in body, roles, relationships, or life direction.

Increased frustration, sensitivity, or emotional intensity that feels unfamiliar or difficult to regulate, often influenced by hormonal and nervous system changes.

Pulling back from connection or support—sometimes due to overwhelm, shame, or feeling misunderstood during reproductive or parenting transitions.

Trouble focusing, decision-making, or sustaining attention, commonly reported during periods of hormonal fluctuation or emotional overload.

Difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or feeling rested—often interacting with mood changes, anxiety, and nervous system dysregulation.

An internal experience where mood symptoms and anxiety overlap, reinforcing one another during pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause, or parenthood-related decision-making.
Divorce Mediation

“Love doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be true” (Buddha)

Our Therapeutic Approaches

Holistic & Transpersonal

To delve into your post-partum experiences, we take a holistic and Emotionally Focused approach (EFT). Emotionally Focused Therapy looks at you as a whole person, your attachment styles, and bonding pattern and uses this transpersonal and valuable information to address unhealthy patterns of developing behavior and bonding with your baby, alongside your other social connections.

The term holistic also applies to you as not just a mother, but as part of a family unit, and as an individual outside your parental role. By removing yourself from what can be an all-encompassing desire/obligation to always be a mother, your established roles are viewed within an integrative behavioral approach. This assists us, and yourself, in determining how to maintain a healthy, empathetic, and productive functioning of your current familial system and future system.

‘You’-centric & Relational

Our insight-oriented approach allows your own experiences to guide your treatment path. Your therapist will use the information they’re given from your communicative style, past issues, and current raising of issues, to determine the most productive course of action that benefits yourself and your child.

Raising a child has a lot to do with whether or not you have a partner/support and how that support is given and interpreted. If there are relationship issues involved in your PPA or PPD, we may incorporate the Gottman Method of couples therapy into your treatment. This approach addresses the core aspects of affection and mutual respect, helps guide you and your partner through small steps and goals that may be helpful at the beginning stages of raising your child.

Mindfulness

By remaining in the present moment and acknowledging the current goals of a healthier daily life for you and your family, a narrative can be brought forth. It’s important to separate the anxiety and depressive symptoms from you as a person and mother. It’s easy to get lost in them and feel as though it’s your fault for not falling in line with what a mother ‘should be’. Which, honestly, is a highly problematic notion that we, as a society, need to work on. Regardless, staying in the present and coming to see yourself as a whole being, removed from your symptoms, is invaluable in tackling them head-on.