Online Therapy for Infertility and Pregnancy Loss in Santa Barbara, CA
Therapy for the grief of infertility, failed IVF, miscarriage, stillbirth, and TFMR. Serving Santa Barbara, Goleta, Carpinteria, Montecito, and the Central Coast.
You used to feel at home in your body
You used to shower without avoiding the mirror, have sex without it feeling like a medical procedure, get dressed in the morning without thinking about what your body has failed to do. Now your body feels like a project that keeps returning bad results, and you’re not sure when you stopped living in it and started managing it.
Maybe you’ve been through rounds of treatment. IUI, IVF, medications that made you feel like a different person. You’ve tracked your cycles, given yourself injections, rearranged your work schedule around monitoring appointments. Every month is a cycle of hope and waiting and results and grief, and you’re exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t fix.
Or maybe it was a loss. A miscarriage at eight weeks that your doctor called “common.” A second-trimester loss that required a medical procedure and a recovery your employer gave you three days for. A pregnancy that ended because of a diagnosis at the anatomy scan, and a decision you had to make that still sits heavy in your chest months later.
Or maybe it’s the grief of not knowing. You’ve been trying for a year, or two, or longer. Nothing has worked, and nobody can tell you why. You’re stuck between giving up and trying again, and both options feel unbearable.
Whatever your specific experience, the common thread is this: the grief from infertility and pregnancy loss doesn’t behave like other grief. People around you don’t always know what to say, and the things they do say (“at least you know you can get pregnant,” “everything happens for a reason,” “have you tried relaxing?“) make it worse. You’re grieving something that most people in your life can’t see, and some days the loneliness of that is heavier than the loss itself.
Learn more about my approach to treating infertility and pregnancy loss.
The specific grief of infertility and pregnancy loss
Infertility and pregnancy loss create a grief that most people in your life won't fully grasp, and that you may have trouble making sense of yourself. You might be mourning a pregnancy that lasted six weeks, or a transfer that didn't work, or a baby you held and named, or a pregnancy you ended because the diagnosis left you with no good options. The loss is real in every one of those situations, even when the people around you don't treat it that way.
I've trained specifically in how reproductive loss affects the brain and body. You won't spend sessions explaining what a two-week wait does to you, or why a friend's pregnancy announcement can feel like a punch to the chest, or why your doctor's calm tone sometimes makes you want to scream. That understanding is already in the room, which means your sessions focus on what this experience is doing to your daily life and how to help it change.
When understanding the grief hasn't changed how your body carries it
After enough cycles of hope followed by loss, your body starts treating hope itself as a threat. That's why you tense up before the phone rings with results, why your heart races when someone asks a harmless question about kids, why you can't settle down even on days when nothing bad is happening. Your body learned to stay on guard, and it hasn't gotten the message that it can stop.
You can understand all of this clearly and still feel the dread arrive on schedule. That's not a failure of insight or effort. It means the grief is living somewhere that insight alone can't reach, which is exactly what the therapeutic approaches I use are designed to work with.
What changes after infertility and pregnancy loss therapy
A friend tells you she’s pregnant, and your stomach drops, but it passes. You congratulate her and mean it. Later that day, you feel sad, and you let yourself feel it without it turning into a week-long spiral. By the evening, you’re making dinner and thinking about something else. The sadness and the rest of your life can exist in the same day.
You sit in the waiting room at your doctor’s office, and your hands aren’t shaking. The appointment is just an appointment. You ask your questions, you hear the answers, and you leave feeling like you had a say in what happens next instead of being carried along by the process.
Saturday morning starts with coffee on the couch, not with the familiar dread that another weekend will be swallowed by grief. You read something for fun. You text a friend about a hike. By noon, you’ve done two things that have nothing to do with treatment or loss, and you didn’t have to force yourself into either one.
Your mother-in-law asks when you’re going to give her grandchildren, and instead of the hot flash of rage followed by crying in the bathroom, you give a short answer and change the subject. On the drive home, you laugh about it with your partner instead of sitting in silence. The question stung, but it didn’t ruin the visit.
Someone at work brings their new baby to the office. In the past, you would have found an excuse to leave the room or smiled through it while your chest felt like it was caving in. This time, you hold the baby for a minute, say something nice, and hand her back. Your body stays calm. The rest of the afternoon is yours.
You’re lying in bed with your partner and you’re present. Your mind doesn’t drift to the calendar, the next cycle, the last loss. You’re in your body, in the room, with the person next to you. Intimacy feels like connection again instead of another thing your body is supposed to perform.
You make a decision about next steps, whether that’s another round of treatment, a different path to parenthood, or stepping off the treatment track entirely, and the decision comes from a clear, grounded place instead of panic or desperation. You trust yourself to make it. You don’t second-guess it for the next three weeks.
You realize you went an entire Wednesday without thinking about your cycle, your numbers, or your next appointment. You weren’t avoiding it, other parts of your life just filled back in. You signed up for something you’d been putting off. You made plans that aren’t contingent on a treatment schedule. Your world is getting wider again.
Online infertility and pregnancy loss therapy across Santa Barbara County and throughout California
I provide therapy for infertility and pregnancy loss through secure, HIPAA-compliant video sessions. You connect from wherever you are, whether that’s your home in Santa Barbara, your office during a break, or anywhere you have privacy and a screen. No commute, no waiting room.
I work with clients throughout Santa Barbara County and the Central Coast, including people in Goleta, Carpinteria, Montecito, Summerland, Santa Ynez, Solvang, Lompoc, and Santa Maria.
I serve clients across California, including in Los Angeles.
Meet Summer
Infertility and pregnancy loss therapist in Santa Barbara
I’m Summer Verhines, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with specialized training in trauma and grief.
I help people process the grief and trauma that infertility and pregnancy loss create, so they can make decisions clearly, reconnect with their partners and their lives, and stop feeling betrayed by their body.
Before I became a therapist, I spent nine years working in child welfare and adoption, which gave me deep experience with the grief and complexity of family building from every angle. I understand what it means to want a family and to have that path be harder, longer, and more painful than you expected.
Logistics
50-minute Sessions are $250.
I also offer 90-minute sessions for $375 and intensive sessions (2-4 hours) ranging from $500 to $1000 for people who want to work intensively.
I don't take insurance directly, but I can provide superbills for out-of-network reimbursement if your plan covers that.
I am available early mornings, evenings, and weekends. I provide services online only.
Self-Schedule or Contact Me Below
For the quickest and most confidential option, you’re encouraged to book directly into my calendar by clicking the Self-Schedule Here button below. That button will take you to my HIPAA-compliant calendar where you may request an appointment. Once I confirm your appointment request (typically within 24 hours), I will email you the new client forms to digitally sign. Then, we will meet on your scheduled day.
If you have questions prior to scheduling, you can also use the contact form below, and I’ll reply within 48 business hours. If you don’t see a reply, please check your junk/spam folder.
I look forward to hearing from you!
— Summer Verhines, LCSW
Contact Summer
Frequently Asked Questions
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My specialty is trauma and grief, and I apply that expertise to the specific experiences of infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and termination for medical reasons (TFMR). I use body-based approaches (EMDR, Brainspotting, and ART) because the grief from reproductive loss tends to get stuck in the body in ways that talk therapy alone has a hard time reaching. My background in child welfare and adoption also means I understand the full landscape of family building, including the grief that comes when the path doesn’t go the way you planned.
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All three approaches work with your body’s stress response rather than relying only on talking through your experience. In EMDR, I’ll guide your eyes to follow a specific pattern while you hold a difficult memory or feeling in mind. You might notice the emotional weight of a memory getting lighter over the course of a session. Brainspotting uses your eye position to find where your brain holds stress, and you process from that point. ART combines elements of both and tends to move quickly. None of these require you to retell every detail of every loss or every appointment, which many clients find relieving.
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There is no minimum gestational age for grief. A loss at six weeks can be just as devastating as a loss at twenty weeks, especially if you’d been trying for a long time, if the pregnancy represented hope after previous losses, or if the people around you minimized it. If the loss is still affecting your sleep, your relationships, your ability to function, or your willingness to try again, therapy can help regardless of when the loss occurred.
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You don’t need to wait. Many of my clients are in active treatment cycles and find that therapy helps them tolerate the emotional ups and downs of the process, make clearer decisions about next steps, and maintain their relationships and their sense of self while the treatment is ongoing. You don’t have to be “finished” to start getting support.
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I provide all sessions through secure, HIPAA-compliant video. Many clients prefer online therapy because it fits more easily into treatment schedules and removes the stress of commuting to another appointment. My clients consistently report that the virtual format feels just as connected and effective as in-person work.
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Sessions are $250. I’m a private-pay therapist, which means I don’t contract with insurance companies directly. I do provide superbills, which are detailed receipts you can submit to your insurance for potential out-of-network reimbursement. Many of my clients recover a significant portion of the session cost this way. I recommend calling the number on the back of your insurance card and asking about your out-of-network mental health benefits before your first session.