I'm a licensed psychologist providing ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) therapy for OCD to adults, and I want to share why I find treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) to be some of the most meaningful work I do. If you are living with OCD, or wondering whether what you are experiencing might be OCD, I hope this offers a window into what treatment can look like and why I genuinely look forward to this work.

Every therapist has a therapeutic home: an approach that fits not just their training, but their understanding of what it means to be human and what can promote psychological well-being. Mine is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. In this post, I share why I love practicing ACT, what it looks like in my sessions, and why I believe it fits so well for the people I work with: adults navigating reproductive and perinatal mental health challenges, OCD, anxiety, and trauma.

The decision about whether to have a child — or another child — is one of the most significant a person can face. It is also not talked openly about enough. Most of the cultural scripts available are either enthusiastically pro-parenthood or, in more recent years, enthusiastically childfree. What gets far less focus is the space in between: genuine ambivalence, the longing that sits alongside doubt, and the strain that emerges when two people in a committed relationship find themselves on different sides of this question. Ambivalence about having children is more common than people realize. This post is for anyone sitting with that uncertainty.

Few decisions feel more loaded during pregnancy or the postpartum period than the question of medication. For people already navigating a significant life transition, the question of whether to start, continue, or stop a psychiatric medication can feel complex. This post is not a prescribing guide. I am a psychologist, not a prescriber, and medication decisions should always be made in partnership with a medical provider with experience with prescribing psychiatric medications for perinatal mental health. What I can offer is a clinical perspective on how these decisions get made and what the evidence actually suggests about the risks of untreated mental health conditions, not just the risks of treatment.

Perinatal mental health care has historically centered the birthing person. Non-birthing partners, including fathers, co-mothers, non-binary partners, LGBTQ+ co-parents, and others who are not carrying or delivering a child, experience their own emotional journeys through infertility, pregnancy loss, pregnancy, the postpartum period, and parenthood. These journeys are not identical to the birthing parent's experience, but they are not lesser. They carry their own identity shifts and mental health risks. And they are far more likely to go unnamed, unsupported, and untreated.

If you work as a healthcare professional in any role that keeps you close to people in their most vulnerable moments — you are working in one of the most psychologically demanding environments in healthcare. Research confirms what many providers experience but rarely name: secondary traumatic stress, moral injury, burnout, and grief are significant and pervasive occupational hazards in medicine.

Prenatal testing is often framed, in the language of obstetric care, as routine and standard components of contemporary prenatal care, offered to pregnant people across a spectrum of risk profiles. For many people, these tests are also a source of significant anxiety. Waiting for results, receiving news that was not expected, and living through a pregnancy that has been designated high-risk can all be distressing. If you are navigating prenatal testing, a concerning result, or a pregnancy that has been defined by complication or uncertainty, this post is for you.

A subsequent pregnancy after miscarriage, stillbirth, or neonatal loss is not the same as a pregnancy that has not been preceded by loss. Many people go into it knowing this intuitively, and still find themselves surprised by how complicated it actually feels — how the hope and the fear live side by side, how hard it is to let themselves believe that this time might be different, how often the grief interrupts the anticipation of the new pregnancy. If you are pregnant after a loss, or preparing for the possibility, this post is for you.

A NICU or PICU stay is not just a medical experience. It involves prolonged periods of uncertainty, hypervigilance, and emotional distress that impact caregivers long after discharge. Parents and caregivers often describe these hospitalizations as living in survival mode, where attention is constantly directed toward monitors, test results, procedures, and the possibility of sudden change.

Breast cancer and gynecologic cancers, which include endometrial, cervical, ovarian, vulvar, and vaginal cancers, involve the most intimate parts of a person's body. They can affect fertility, sexual health, hormonal function, body image, and the felt sense of self in ways that are profound and often underacknowledged. The psychological impact of these diagnoses does not stay neatly within the boundaries of treatment. It extends across diagnosis, through the demands of active treatment, into survivorship, and often long beyond the point where the medical world considers the journey over.

Perfectionism in parenthood is rarely talked about as a mental health concern, but for many parents, it quietly drives anxiety, exhaustion, and chronic self-criticism in ways that significantly affect wellbeing. Parents who hold high standards for themselves often find that the demands of caregiving activate a relentless internal pressure to do things right, be enough, and never fall short. In parenthood, however, these same traits can quietly turn into rigid expectations that undermine emotion regulation, self-care, and long-term sustainability.

Postpartum psychosis is one of the most misunderstood postpartum mental health conditions. It is rare, but considered a medical emergency. Because it occurs infrequently, many people are unfamiliar with how it presents, how symptoms fluctuate, and how quickly it can escalate without appropriate treatment. At the same time, public conversations about postpartum psychosis often lean toward fear or sensationalism, which can increase stigma and make early recognition harder rather than easier.

Understanding postpartum psychosis matters not because it is common, but because timely recognition and treatment are incredibly important and can be highly effective. With appropriate care, recovery outcomes are generally very good. Education plays a key role in safety, early intervention, and reducing unnecessary fear.

Pregnancy and parenthood often activate experiences from much earlier in life. Many parents are surprised by how strongly old memories, emotional responses, or relationship dynamics resurface during these periods of time. These reactions are not a sign that something is wrong. They reflect how deeply parenting engages attachment systems, identity, and the nervous system.

Research consistently shows that awareness, therapeutic support, and new relational experiences can meaningfully interrupt intergenerational cycles that have persisted across generations. Becoming conscious of these patterns, even when it is uncomfortable, is already part of how change happens.

Many parents worry about whether they are doing it right – whether they are meeting every need in every moment, whether their mistakes are leaving lasting impacts, whether they are, at some fundamental level, enough. The pressure to parent well in our society is relentless. And for many parents, it produces a kind of chronic anxiety about whether the small, ordinary moments of getting it wrong are quietly adding up to something they will not be able to undo. The Circle of Security model clarifies that children do not need perfection. Children need presence, attunement, and repair.

Stillbirth, defined as the death of a fetus at 20 or more weeks of gestation, is one of the most devastating losses a person can experience. It is also one of the least talked about. In the United States, there are roughly 21,000 families each year navigating a loss that the culture around them often does not have language for, rituals to mark, or genuine understanding of. If you are reading this in the aftermath of a stillbirth — your own, or someone you love — you are not alone, even when it feels that way. What you are carrying is immensely painful and profoundly deserving of support.

Medical anxiety — the fear, dread, or distress that builds before and during medical procedures — is one of the most common and least addressed mental health experiences in healthcare. Many people anticipate invasive procedures with significant worry, spend the days or weeks beforehand bracing themselves, and endure the appointment by white-knuckling through it. The message from medical culture has often been implicit but clear: this is what you do. You show up, you get through it, and you move on. But "grinning and bearing it" is not the only option — and for many people, it is not working.

Family planning, pregnancy, and the postpartum period can be emotionally demanding for anyone. For LGBTQ+ individuals and couples, these transitions often involve additional layers of stress that are rarely acknowledged in standard narratives of parenthood. Structural barriers, decision fatigue related to assisted reproductive technology (ART), financial strain, and experiences of discrimination or microaggressions can significantly affect mental health across the family-building journey. These stressors reflect systems that were not designed with LGBTQ+ families in mind.

Medical trauma is not always recognized as trauma by the people who experience it, by the people around them, or even by the medical providers involved in their care. A frightening diagnosis, an emergency procedure, a lengthy hospitalization, a complication no one anticipated, or repeated interactions with a healthcare system that felt dismissive or dehumanizing can all leave lasting psychological marks. And yet people who are struggling in the aftermath of these experiences often find themselves minimizing what happened, questioning whether their response is proportionate, or wondering why they can't move on.

Intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) are often described clinically in terms of treatment protocols, pregnancy success rates, finances, and timelines. For the people undergoing them, however, these treatments are often experienced as intensive, emotionally demanding experiences that unfold alongside daily life, work, relationships, and existing stressors. IUI and IVF involve repeated medical intervention, hormonal manipulation, and prolonged uncertainty, all of which can place significant strain on mental health and well-being.

Medical conditions such as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis affect far more than reproductive organs alone. Both are now understood as complex endocrine and inflammatory conditions that can influence mood, anxiety, energy, sleep, pain processing, and emotion regulation. While these conditions are often discussed together, they affect mental health through different biological pathways and lived experiences. Both have a long history of being minimized, misunderstood, and underdiagnosed.