Therapy for the seasons of life no one prepared you for.
Online reproductive mental health therapy for adults in California. Schedule a free 15 minute consultation today.
“I always thought this would be easy.”
Getting pregnant. Being pregnant. Loving new parenthood. Feeling at home in your own body. When it isn’t easy, it can feel like a private failure. It isn’t one. I’m Gail Kirk Poust, LMFT, a reproductive mental health therapist, and I provide online therapy across California for infertility, pregnancy loss, pregnancy and postpartum struggles, PMDD, chronic pain or illness, perimenopause, and OCD. I am in network with Aetna, Cigna, and NorCal Kaiser.
Ready to talk? Schedule a free 15-minute consultation. No commitment, just a conversation.
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I look forward to supporting you in whatever life stage you find yourself in.
Maybe it sounds like this:
You do the math on your cycle again, as if the answer might change. You smile through another baby shower and cry in the car. You love your baby and grieve the person you used to be, and you’re not sure you’re allowed to say both out loud. You watch yourself snap at the people you love in the week before your period and spend the rest of the month apologizing. You wake at 3 a.m. in a body that feels like it belongs to someone else now, whether from perimenopause, a chronic condition, or thoughts you never invited and can’t turn off.
And through all of it, you keep functioning. You show up. You look fine. Which somehow makes it lonelier.
The hard part about waiting it out
Maybe you’ve been telling yourself it’s a phase. You’ve scrolled for answers at midnight, typed your worries into a chatbot, downloaded the app, read the articles. Generic advice can only go so far, because it doesn’t know you.
Here’s what I’ve watched happen when these struggles go unsupported: they don’t stay contained. The two hard weeks before your period start costing you the other two. The grief you’re postponing shows up as irritability, numbness, or a fuse you don’t recognize. The intrusive thoughts you’re managing alone teach you to avoid more and more of your life. Relationships strain at exactly the moment you need them most, because your partner can’t read what you won’t say and you’re too depleted to translate. “I’ll deal with it after the next cycle, after the baby sleeps, after things calm down” quietly becomes months, and then years, of not feeling like yourself.
None of this means something is wrong with you. It means you’ve been carrying something heavy without help, and carrying it longer doesn’t make it lighter.
You are not the only one.
When you’re struggling, it’s easy to believe everyone else has it figured out. The research tells a very different story:
- 1 in 5 birthing parents experience depression during pregnancy or postpartum, which makes it the most common complication of childbirth.
- 1 in 10 non-birthing parents experience depression during pregnancy or postpartum.
- 1 in 5 women experience anxiety disorders during pregnancy or postpartum.
- 8% of women experience OCD during pregnancy, and 17% experience OCD postpartum.
- 1 in 4 known pregnancies end in miscarriage.
- 1 in 5 women ages 15 to 49 are unable to get pregnant after a year of trying.
- 24.3% of US adults experience chronic pain (defined as pain lasting 3 months or more).
Photo by Élisabeth Joly on Unsplash
I know this territory, because I’ve lived it
I am a reproductive mental health therapist because I have been on both sides of this work. I have walked through pregnancy loss, infertility, the transition to parenthood, perimenopause, and chronic health conditions myself. What that means for you is simple: you won’t spend a single session convincing me that what you’re feeling is real. You won’t have to translate, pretend you’re okay, or brace for “it’s just hormones.”
How therapy with me works
My foundation is Narrative Therapy. Reproductive life comes with heavy scripts about what a body should do, what a parent should feel, or how long grief is allowed to last. When your life doesn’t follow the script, it’s easy to conclude you’re the one who’s broken. Together we’ll pull those stories into the light and hand the pen back to you. Around that foundation I bring practical, research-backed tools chosen for your situation: CBT for the thought spirals, DBT skills for the overwhelming moments, ACT for what can’t be changed, and ERP, the gold-standard treatment for OCD and intrusive thoughts. Sessions are warm but purposeful. We set real goals, track them together, and you leave with things to actually do between sessions, because that’s where change happens.
Every session is by secure video, from anywhere in California, whether you’re near my Berkeley home base or hours from the nearest specialist. My care is culturally sensitive, trauma-informed, and LGBTQIA+ affirming, and I welcome women, men, and people of every identity and family structure.
It is my honor to hear your story. Schedule your free 15 minute consultation today.
5109453194 | Send Email
Therapy for Postpartum Depression and Perinatal Mental Health
If you’ve found yourself searching “postpartum depression therapist near me” or “postpartum depression counseling near me” while everyone else sleeps, you should know you are not broken or a bad parent. You’re dealing with the most common complication of childbirth, and it responds to treatment. Therapy for postpartum depression (sometimes called postnatal depression or perinatal mood disorders) can help you make sense of what you’re feeling, quiet the relentless self-criticism, and reconnect with yourself and your baby at your own pace. As a California therapist treating postpartum depression and anxiety online, I offer a space where you can say the hard, unspeakable parts of new parenthood out loud, without judgment. And if your struggle looks less like sadness and more like frightening intrusive thoughts you can’t turn off, that has a name too; Postpartum OCD is highly treatable. Learn more on my pregnancy and postpartum and OCD pages.
Support for Grief After Pregnancy Loss and Infertility
Grief after pregnancy loss is real grief, even when the world never got to meet who you lost. Whether it was an early miscarriage, a stillbirth, a termination for medical reasons, or the compounding losses of infertility, you shouldn’t have to carry it silently while everyone around you moves on. In our work together, your loss will be named and honored, and we’ll find ways for you to carry your grief while still moving toward the life you want. Read more on my pregnancy loss and infertility pages.
When Your Body Changes the Rules: PMDD, Perimenopause, and Chronic pain or Illness
Your struggle might run on a monthly clock: one or two weeks of rage, despair, or anxiety before your period that vanish when it arrives. Perimenopause may have scrambled your moods and your sense of self. Or a chronic illness or chronic pain may have quietly rewritten your whole life while everyone tells you that you look fine. If you’ve been dismissed with “it’s just hormones” or “it’s just stress,” you’ll find something different here: therapy that treats your experience as real, and gives you concrete tools for living in the body you actually have. Learn more on my PMDD, perimenopause and menopause, and chronic pain and illness pages.
Everyone’s story is different. Let’s talk about yours. Schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
I look forward to supporting you in whatever life stage you find yourself in.
“A woman is like a teabag–you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
Citations:
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Accessed May 2026). Infertility: Frequently Asked Questions. https://www.cdc.gov/reproductive-health/infertility-faq/index.html
Lucas JW, Sohi I. Chronic pain and high-impact chronic pain in U.S. adults, 2023. NCHS Data Brief, no 518. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2024. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc/169630
March of Dimes. (Accessed May 2026). Miscarriage. https://www.marchofdimes.org/find-support/topics/miscarriage-loss-grief/miscarriage
Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health. (2026, April). Maternal Mental Health[Fact Sheet]. https://policycentermmh.org/maternal-mental-health-fact-sheet/
Postpartum Support International (Accessed May 2026). Perinatal Mental Health: Signs, Symptoms, and Treatment. https://postpartum.net/perinatal-mental-health/