Medical journey
Surgeries, appointments and hospital stays, and what those years left in you once the crisis was over.
Surgery and Hospitalizations
I work with parents of children who are in and out of the hospital. When a child’s illness is what brings you in, the work is with you, the parent.
Your child has been in and out of doctors’ offices and the hospital over the years. They are doing okay now, but are you?
Sometimes the call is about the child: they are not doing as well as you hoped. Often there is something you have not processed either, and there is room for that here, including grief for the child you expected to have.
Your child arrived, and the next few months or years were surgery after surgery.
Everyone tells you how strong you were. What almost nobody asks is what it did to you, or what it is still doing now that the crisis is technically over.
The office is in West Los Angeles, on the border of Santa Monica, near Centinela and Santa Monica Boulevard. Talk sessions also happen by video, anywhere in California.
What I Work With
A child who is not thriving
School, mood, behavior, or pulling away from you. We start with what you are seeing, and decide together whether your child should be seen.
Co-parenting
Raising children across two homes after a split. I call it co-protection, because the job is protecting the children from the fallout. Divorce and co-parenting →
Parallel parenting
Sometimes contact between the two of you keeps going wrong. Parallel parenting is the alternative: each of you runs your own house, and contact stays minimal and in writing. The goal is to keep the children out of the conflict.
What It Leaves Behind
If your child is in and out of the hospital, there is no ‘after’ — you are always waiting for the next shoe to drop.
You ran at a level nobody can sustain, and of course that was necessary at the time. Unfortunately it does not switch off when the crisis does. Parents describe listening for breathing at night long after there is a reason to, or reading a normal temperature as the start of something.
It shows up in the marriage as well, because two people go through the same year differently and rarely get an hour to talk about it. Guilt is the part people admit to last. None of that is a failure of gratitude.
What the Work Looks Like
The parents
Our work usually begins with the parents. Many parents notice a few moments from the hospital that stay with them and keep replaying in their head. Perhaps it was a conversation with a doctor, or an image of their child before surgery. EMDR can help reduce how often those images return, and discharge the emotional weight of those moments.
The couple
Two people who went through the same year and came out of it holding different versions of it. The work is less about the disagreement in front of you than about the months when neither of you had the room to be a person.
The child
Sometimes the child is the one carrying it, and EMDR can be done with children. Whether that is the right move, and when, is decided together on the first call. Where it matters, their medical team is part of that.
The siblings
Sometimes it is the sibling who needs the room. They were the one who was fine, so they got less of everyone’s attention. I do not see siblings often, and it is still worth asking.
Who comes in is decided together on the first call.
What This Is Not
This is not medical care and it does not sit between you and your child’s doctors. It runs alongside them.
It is also not a promise that the fear goes away. Living with a child who has a serious condition means some of the vigilance is accurate, and the work is not about talking you out of it. The work is on the alarm that goes off when nothing is happening.
Questions People Ask
Is the work with the child or the parent?
With you, the parent.
Start Here
A consultation call first. You describe the situation, and we work out whether this is the right place for it, and who should be in the room.
Call or text
