Fertility Therapy for High- Achieving Women in California
This isn’t how you imagined it. You expected that when you were ready to start growing your family, it would happen easily. Instead, you find yourself waiting, hoping, researching, grieving, and wondering how much longer this season will last.
Infertility can affect every part of your life, including your relationships, identity, work, and emotional well-being. Throughout your life, you’ve probably found that working hard leads to results. You set goals, make a plan, work hard, and eventually move forward.
But infertility challenges that belief in a way few other experiences do.
For the first time, you may be doing everything “right” and still not getting the outcome you want more than anything in the world. And the last thing you need to hear is “just relax.”
Whether you're trying to conceive, preparing for IVF, navigating pregnancy after infertility, loss, or grieving the family you imagined, you don't have to carry it alone. Together, we'll help you move through uncertainty with greater resilience, self-compassion and hope.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Every month feels like another emotional roller coaster.
You're exhausted by how much mental space fertility has taken over.
Your life feels divided into two-week waits, doctor's appointments, and test results.
Pregnancy announcements feel complicated now… you’re genuinely happy for them and quietly heartbroken for yourself.
You're constantly wondering how much longer you can keep doing this.
You feel guilty for struggling because "other people have it worse."
Your relationship has become more about schedules, medications, and logistics than spontaneity.
You feel like your body is letting you down.
Maybe you’ve caught yourself wondering…
Why does everyone else seem to get pregnant so easily?
Why is my body failing me?
Will this ever happen for me?
How much more disappointment can I handle?
Am I falling behind everyone else?
Will I still be okay if this doesn't happen the way I imagined?
How do I keep living my life while waiting?
There is hope.
If this feels familiar, please know that you are not failing.
You are navigating one of the most emotionally demanding experiences a person can face.
While therapy can't change the outcome of your fertility journey, it can change how you move through it.
Together, we’ll create space for your grief, make sense of emotions that often feel impossible to hold, and help you navigate this season with greater self-compassion, resilience, and hope.
Therapy isn’t about forcing positivity or pretending everything is okay. It’s about learning to hold heartbreak and hope at the same time.
Through our work together, you will develop practical tools for coping with uncertainty, caring for yourself and your relationships, and staying connected to the life and values that matter most- even in the midst of pain or longing.
While you can't control every outcome, you can learn to care for yourself through the uncertainty instead of feeling consumed by it.
Meet Dr. Catherine
Evidence-based care. Genuine connection. Lasting change.
For nearly 15 years, I've helped women navigate anxiety, major life transitions, and reproductive mental health. I specialize in supporting women experiencing infertility, IVF, pregnancy loss, and the emotional complexity of family building.
My own experience with secondary infertility and IVF gives me a firsthand understanding of the uncertainty, grief, hope, and emotional whiplash that can accompany this journey. I know what it's like to wait for phone calls, count down to appointments, and wonder whether life will unfold the way you imagined.
While personal experience informs my empathy, my approach is grounded in evidence-based care. I integrate attachment-based therapy with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help you process difficult emotions while developing practical tools for navigating uncertainty with greater resilience and self-compassion.
Therapy with me is collaborative, warm, and active. There will absolutely be space for grief, anger, and fear (we can’t get around that) but clients are often surprised how much space we create for laughter, perspective, and reconnecting with the parts of yourself that infertility may have overshadowed. My goal isn't simply to help you survive this season. It's to help you continue building a meaningful life in the midst of uncertainty and change.
FAQ about Fertility Therapy, Infertility & IVF Counseling
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Absolutely. Infertility affects far more than your ability to become pregnant, it often impacts your relationships, confidence, identity, work, and emotional well-being.
Therapy provides a space to process the grief, uncertainty, and chronic stress that often accompany infertility while helping you develop practical tools to navigate the emotional ups and downs.
This journey can be incredibly isolating, and having a safe and confidential place to just let yourself be messy or uncensored can be life changing.
Whether you're trying to conceive naturally, pursuing fertility treatment, or considering your next steps, you don't have to carry this alone.
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Completely.
Many women are surprised by the intensity of their emotional responses during infertility. Pregnancy announcements, baby showers, social media, or even casual conversations can trigger sadness, anger, grief, guilt, or jealousy.
These emotions don't make you a bad friend or a selfish person (but I know it can feel that way). These emotions make you someone navigating an incredibly painful and uncertain experience. Therapy offers a space where those feelings don't need to be hidden or explained away. Every part of you is welcome.
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Alongside nearly 15 years as a psychologist, I've personally navigated secondary infertility and IVF. I know what it's like to wait for results, replay conversations with doctors, compare timelines, and carry hope alongside disappointment.
That experience enriches our work together immensely. My clients often tell me they appreciate working with someone who understands the emotional reality of infertility, the medical lingo and hyper specific details related to treatment, and the evidence-based approaches that can help them move through it.
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You don’t have to wait you until things feel unbearable to benefit from therapy. Starting fertility therapy before IVF can be incredibly helpful.
Trying to conceive often involves month or years of uncertainty, disappointment, difficult decisions, and emotional ups and downs long before fertility treatment officially begins. Therapy gives you the opportunity to develop practical coping strategies, strengthen your relationship with uncertainty, and build emotional resilience before the stress of IVF is added to the picture.
If you do move forward with IVF, you'll already have tools in place to help you navigate appointments, waiting periods, setbacks, and difficult decisions. And if your path looks different than you expected, you'll have a supportive place to process those changes without feeling like you have to carry them alone.
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Pregnancy loss brings a unique kind of grief. I’m convinced that if you’ve never experienced it there is no way to fully understand how it feels…
You may find yourself grieving not only the pregnancy itself but also the future you imagined.
Therapy provides space to process that grief while helping you navigate anxiety about future pregnancies, relationships, work, and moving forward at your own pace. There is no "right" timeline for healing.
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Secondary infertility can feel especially confusing and isolating. You feel grateful for the child you already have while simultaneously grieving the family you hoped to build.
Guilt is incredibly common because you feel like you "shouldn't" feel this devastated.
As someone who has personally experienced secondary infertility, I understand the complexity of holding gratitude and grief at the same time. Both can exist together.
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My approach combines attachment-based therapy with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Together, we'll explore how your experiences have shaped the way you respond to uncertainty, disappointment, and loss. We do this not because we're staying in the past, but because understanding those patterns helps us create meaningful change in the present.
We'll also focus on practical strategies that help you navigate uncertainty with greater flexibility, self-compassion, and resilience throughout your fertility journey.
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Yes. IVF can be physically demanding, emotionally exhausting, and filled with uncertainty. Many women find themselves living from appointment to appointment, scan to scan, and phone call to phone call.
Therapy during IVF can help you manage anxiety, cope with disappointment, strengthen communication with your partner, and find ways to continue living your life while navigating treatment. My goal isn't to make IVF feel easy—it's to help you feel more supported throughout the process.
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Infertility can place enormous stress on even the strongest relationships. Partners often cope differently, communicate differently, and process grief differently.
Therapy can help you better understand one another, communicate more effectively, navigate difficult decisions together, and protect your relationship from becoming consumed by fertility treatment.
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Yes. I provide virtual fertility therapy for women throughout California using secure telehealth sessions.
Whether you live in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Orange County, the Bay Area, or a smaller community, online therapy allows you to access specialized reproductive mental health care from your home.