Therapy for Parents in Encino, CA
In-person in Encino and online therapy across California
What This Is: Therapy for You, Not Your Child
Therapy for parents is individual therapy focused on you and what parenting brings up for you. It is not child therapy, play therapy, family therapy, or a place to bring your child so I can tell you how to “fix” them. Instead, we look at what happens inside you in difficult moments with your child and why certain situations can be especially hard.
You may know how you want to respond and still find yourself becoming more angry, anxious, overwhelmed, or shut down than you expected. Sometimes what is happening with your child can bring up feelings and reactions that seem much bigger than the moment itself.
You do not have to wait until your child is struggling or your family is in crisis to come to therapy. Wanting to understand why certain moments are so hard and respond in ways that feel more like the parent you want to be is reason enough.
Cycle-Breaking Parenting Therapy
“I don’t want to parent like my parents.”
“I don’t want to parent the way I was parented.”
“I don’t want to be like my mother.”
“I don’t want to be like my father.”
“How do I not repeat my parents when I’m overwhelmed?”
However they describe it, underneath this fear is a deep wish to give their child something different from what they experienced growing up.
Often, they come because of a specific moment that stays with them: a moment that lasts only four seconds when they respond to their child and hear their own parent’s voice come out of their mouth.
They may have promised themselves years ago that they would do things differently. And yet, when they are exhausted or overwhelmed, they hear themselves say something their parent used to say, become more reactive than they intended, shut down, or respond in a way that feels painfully familiar.
The moment may pass quickly, but they keep replaying it afterward, wondering how they reacted before they had time to think.
Cycle-breaking can begin in that moment of recognition. Those four seconds did not come out of nowhere. Therapy can help you understand why certain moments with your child bring up such strong reactions, how those reactions may connect to your own experiences growing up, and why they can be so difficult to change even when you know how you want to respond.
Intergenerational Trauma and Parenting
For many parents who arrive in my office, the patterns they are trying to change did not begin with them. They may notice themselves responding to their child in ways that remind them of how their own parents responded to them, or find that certain reactions seem connected to what they experienced growing up.
Intergenerational trauma does not have to explain your whole story for what you experienced in your family to still shape how you respond to your child. In therapy, we can look at:
- The roles you learned to play
- The emotions that were welcomed, dismissed, or punished
- The needs you learned to hide, manage, or explain away
- What you learned to expect from closeness, conflict, disappointment, and repair
These early experiences can also influence what you come to expect from close relationships. You can read more about this on my attachment-based therapy page.
We bring that awareness into the parent-child relationship. We look at what happens in the seconds before you react: before the words come out, before your tone gets sharper, before you shut down or go quiet.
You do not break cycles by trying harder or blaming yourself afterward. We begin by understanding those moments clearly enough that you can pause sooner, repair when needed, and stay connected to both yourself and your child.
Who This Is For
Parents come into this work through many doors - a hard season, a moment they keep coming back to, or the quiet sense that their reactions to their child deserve attention. You may arrive with:
Parenting anxiety or general anxiety
Postpartum intrusive thoughts
Although these concerns may be part of what brings you to therapy, the work is not only about reducing symptoms. We can also focus on understanding what happens inside you when your child needs you, pushes back, pulls away, becomes overwhelmed, or brings up unexpected feelings.
For Parents Who Want to Break Cycles
You may be very clear about what you do not want to repeat, yet less certain about what you want to do instead. Some parents wonder if they have gone too far in the opposite direction from how they were raised, question whether they are being too strict or too permissive, or feel guilty when they set limits.
Breaking a cycle does not require deciding that everything about the way you were raised was wrong. You can recognize what you want to carry forward as well as what you want to do differently.
Therapy can help you sort through those choices and respond to your child in ways that reflect the parent you want to be, rather than simply doing the opposite of what you experienced growing up.
Therapy for New Parents
The transition to a new baby can bring challenges you did not expect. Therapy can help with:
- Postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, or intrusive thoughts
- Perinatal mental health and the emotional intensity of early parenthood
- Sleep deprivation and feeling more irritable, tearful, resentful, or overwhelmed than you expected
- Co-regulation with your baby when you are also exhausted, anxious, or overwhelmed
- Changes in your relationship with your partner after becoming parents
- The identity shift of becoming a mother or father — sometimes called matrescence or patrescence
This work is not about telling you that you should enjoy every moment. Instead, therapy can give you a place to talk honestly about what this transition is like while you are learning who you are as a parent.
For Parents of Teenagers
Parenting a teenager can bring up fears and reactions you did not see coming. A teen’s anger, silence, growing independence, or pain may leave you worried about when to step in, when to give them space, or how much say you should have over their choices. You may feel an urge to fix what they are feeling, rescue them from consequences, or over-explain when you are anxious about what is happening.
Parenting anxiety therapy can help you understand what is driving those responses and figure out when to step in, when to give your teenager more room, and how to stay connected as your relationship changes.
When Your Child Is Already in Therapy
Parents also come when their child is already in therapy. Your child’s therapy may bring up questions about your own parenting, your relationship with your child, or the feelings that arise when they are struggling.
While your child’s treatment is centered on their needs, your own therapy gives you a place to focus on your experience as a parent. We can look at your reactions, concerns, and anything you have been through that may be affecting how you respond to your child.
Depending on what feels most relevant, we may also explore ideas sometimes described as reparenting or conscious parenting.
How I Work With Parents
Parents often come in wishing they could find the exact right words to say in hard moments, or stay calm every time parenting overwhelms them. But knowing how you want to respond does not always mean you can do that in the moment. Therapy can help you understand what your child’s behavior brings up in you, what happens in your body in those moments, and why certain reactions can be so difficult to interrupt once they begin.
These moments can happen too quickly to understand while you are in them, so in therapy we slow them down and look more closely at what happened: what your child did, what you heard, what you felt in your body, what you told yourself, and what you did next. Did your tone get sharper? Did you explain too much? Did you shut down, get louder, try to fix your child’s feelings, or feel overwhelmed by guilt afterward?
Understanding Your Reactions Before Trying to Change Them
Many parents want to change their reactions before understanding them, and that urgency makes sense. But lasting change does not come from telling yourself I should have known better.
We first try to understand what was happening inside you. Were you scared because your child was hurting and did not know how to help? Did your child’s anger feel hard to handle without getting riled up? Did their silence feel like rejection? Did their defiance make you feel helpless or out of control? Did their sadness bring up an instinct to make everything better right away?
Once we understand what the moment brought up in you, there is more room to choose a different response.
This is also where therapy for parents overlaps with attachment-based therapy. You can read more about this on my attachment-based therapy page.
Breaking Cycles in Session
In therapy, we can slow down a difficult parenting moment and look closely at what happened. What did your child say or do? What did you feel first? What did the moment mean to you? What did you want to do next? Sometimes a reaction that felt instantaneous becomes easier to understand when we look at it piece by piece.
The point is not to blame yourself or your parents. It is to recognize the pattern earlier, understand what makes it so hard to respond differently in that moment, and create more room for new responses.
Conscious Parenting Without Perfectionism
Some parents arrive looking for conscious parenting therapy or mindful parenting support. They may have read Hunter Clarke-Fields’s Raising Good Humans, or felt drawn to the ideas of reflective parenting, co-regulation, or Winnicott’s good-enough parent.
These frameworks offer language for the kind of parent you want to be. But when you care deeply about not repeating old patterns, even these ideas can feel like another way to fall short.
When you work with me, conscious parenting is not a script to follow. It is about pausing to ask: What is my child trying to tell me? What am I feeling? What story am I telling myself? Am I responding to my child in this moment, or to an old feeling getting stirred up?
Parenting therapy helps you build that capacity: to pause, apologize, and stay emotionally present without treating every misstep as a failure.
The Early Months
In the early months of parenthood, therapy may focus on what happens when exhaustion, anxiety, and the around-the-clock care a baby needs leave you with very little time to rest or recover. We can look at what your baby’s crying brings up in you, how you respond when you are already at your limit, and what co-regulation looks like when you are also trying to steady yourself.
We can also make room for resentment, fear, guilt, grief, or the sense that you do not quite feel like yourself. Understanding what is contributing to these feelings can help us identify which parts of early parenthood are overwhelming you most and what you need as you adjust to being a parent.
The Teenage Years
Parenting a teenager can feel intense in different ways than parenting a younger child. Your teen, who once needed you in more tangible ways, now needs privacy, independence, limits, and connection all at the same time, and their risk-taking, silence, or sudden distance can leave you unsure what to do.
In parenting therapy, we may look at what your teenager needs at this stage, what comes up in you as a parent, and what happens between you when they pull away. Sometimes that means noticing when your concern starts to feel like pressure piling up on them: one more question, one more explanation, one more attempt to get them to open up.
We explore how to stay connected while respecting their growing need for autonomy, set boundaries without escalating conflict, and tolerate not always knowing what your teenager is thinking, feeling, or doing. The goal is not to make them more open, less angry, or less independent. It is to help you stay curious about who your teenager is becoming, stay steady, and be someone they can turn to when something goes wrong.If Your Child Is Already in Therapy
In our work together, we can look at what your child’s therapy brings up in you: guilt, fear, grief, helplessness, or the wish to fix things for them. We can also look at how to support your child without taking over their therapy or treating every update, concern, or setback as proof that you have done something wrong.
This does not mean that every problem begins with you. We can focus on understanding what happens in you when you feel scared, helpless, or overwhelmed, what your child may need from you in those moments, and how to reconnect after difficult interactions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should parents go to therapy themselves, or just take their child?
If your child is struggling, it can make sense for them to have their own therapist. It can also make sense for you to have one, so you can understand what parenting brings up in you.
Should parents go to therapy? Often, yes. Parenting therapy is not a replacement for child therapy. It supports your side of the parent-child relationship.
What does “cycle breaking” actually mean?
Cycle-breaking parenting therapy means noticing when family-of-origin patterns show up in your tone, your boundaries, or what happens after conflict or disconnection.
For many parents, the clearest sign is the four-second moment: the horrified recognition that the way you spoke, went silent, or reacted reminds you of what you grew up with.
You may think, I don’t want to parent like my parents or I don’t want to be like my mother. Or you may have typed how not to repeat my parents into a search bar at midnight.
In cycle-breaking parenting therapy, we use family-of-origin work, reparenting, and conscious parenting to understand what gets stirred up so you can pause sooner, repair, and respond more like the parent you intend to be.
Why does therapy help me parent better even when we don’t talk about parenting?
How does therapy help parenting? Often by helping you understand your reaction to your child’s behavior: why their tone, meltdown, silence, defiance, or distress can leave you feeling ashamed, scared, or under pressure to fix it fast.
When you can notice those feelings before reacting, you have more room to pause, listen, set limits, repair, and respond to what your child needs.
Is parenting anxiety a real thing or am I just bad at this?
Parenting anxiety is real. Parenting anxiety therapy can help when worry, bedtime panic, parental burnout, perfectionism in parenting, postpartum intrusive thoughts, or a dysregulated nervous system make parenting feel harder than you expected.
Parenting anxiety, postpartum depression, and general anxiety are common reasons parents reach out to me, and reducing those symptoms can be part of the work. But we may also look at the fear underneath the anxiety: what you worry might happen if you do not intervene, fix, hover, or get it right.
This is often permission-giving work: you are allowed to ask for help when parenting feels like too much to hold alone.
Will therapy make me feel worse about my parents?
Therapy and family-of-origin work are not about blaming your parents for everything or losing sight of what was good.
The goal is holding more than one truth at a time: where they fell short and what they did well, what hurt and what helped, and the possibility that they did the best they could with what they had.
That can mean holding accountability and compassion together, naming what affected you without erasing their humanity. It can help you see what you adapted to and what you want to do differently with your own child.
How long does therapy for parents take?
How long parent therapy takes depends on your history, goals, and what feels most difficult right now. Some parents come for a specific concern during a stressful season; others stay longer because parenting has brought old attachment wounds or family-of-origin patterns closer to the surface.
If you are looking for a therapist for parents near you, you may prefer someone you can see in person or meet with online. I offer in-person therapy in Encino and online therapy throughout California. I also offer a free 30-minute phone consultation to talk about fit, scheduling, and outof-network insurance benefits.
