Online Therapy for Adoptive Parents in Sacramento, CA
Therapy for adoptive parents carrying the weight of parenting that no one prepared you for. Serving Sacramento, Roseville, El Dorado Hills, Elk Grove, Folsom, and surrounding communities.
Adoption-Competent Support for Adoptive Parents
You've done everything right: completed the home study, attended all the trainings, and read every recommended book about adoption and attachment. But nobody told you about this part.
The part where you're lying awake at 3am replaying every parenting decision, where the depression that arrived after your child came home refuses to leave no matter how much you want it to, where that failed adoption from months ago still feels like an open wound, where your child's dysregulation triggers something visceral in your own body that you can't control.
You're functioning on the outside, showing up to work and school events, and posting happy family photos. But on the inside you're struggling with chest tightness that won't release, jaw pain from constant clenching, exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch, and an isolation that's getting worse because you can't explain your reality without either minimizing it or saying too much.
More about how I work with adoptive parents here.
How therapy works for adoptive parents
You've probably read every book, taken every training, and tried every parenting strategy the adoption community recommends. You understand why your child hides food in her pillowcase, why he flinches when you raise your voice even though you've never given him a reason to, why bedtime turns into a battle every single night. You have the knowledge, and you're still losing it at 7pm when nothing you've learned seems to work on a child who's screaming that you're not their real parent.
The gap between what you know and what you can do in those moments isn't about effort or education. When your child melts down and your heart starts pounding and your thinking brain goes offline, your body is reacting to months or years of living in crisis mode. You've been absorbing your child's distress day after day, and your brain has started treating every escalation as an emergency, responding before you have a chance to choose how you want to show up.
That's where my work focuses. The therapeutic approaches I use work directly with how your body responds to stress, so the parenting tools you already have can function the way they're supposed to. You won't need to spend weeks retelling your story or narrating every hard moment from the beginning. Much of this work happens at the level of the physical stress response, the racing heart, the tight jaw, the urge to shut down or yell or walk away, and helps it shift so you can stay present when things get hard at home.
I spent nine years working in child welfare and adoption before becoming a therapist. I sat in placement meetings, reviewed case files, and worked alongside families from the very first day a child came home. That means I already understand what food hoarding means, why the anniversary of a placement can bring everything rushing back, and how exhausting it is to love a child who tests your relationship every day because testing is the only way they've ever learned to figure out if someone will stay. So when you describe what's happening in your house, you can go straight to what you need help with.
What changes with specialized, adoption-competent therapy
You'll stay in the room when your child is falling apart. Right now when the screaming starts, your body takes over before your brain catches up, your heart races, your jaw locks, and you either match their intensity or shut down completely. After doing this work, you'll feel the activation start and be able to stay with it instead of being hijacked by it. Your child will melt down at dinner and you'll keep your voice steady, not because you're performing calm, but because your body has genuinely learned that their distress isn't an emergency you have to fix in the next thirty seconds. The meltdown will still be hard, but it won't ruin the whole evening, and your child will learn something about what it looks like when someone stays.
You'll feel things again, including the good ones. The numbness that settled in somewhere along the way, the one that makes you go through the motions of family life without feeling much of anything, will start to lift. Your child will say something funny at breakfast and you'll laugh before you've decided whether it's a good day or a bad day. You'll feel genuine warmth when they climb into your lap instead of just relief that they're not in crisis. You'll look at your partner across the room and feel something other than exhaustion and logistics.
You'll stop carrying the shame of struggling with something you chose. You wanted this child. You fought for this child. And some days you wonder what you were thinking, and the guilt of that thought is worse than the hard day that produced it. When the shame loosens, you'll be able to tell your partner you need a break without it feeling like a confession. You'll be honest with your close friends about the hard days instead of performing the grateful, happy adoption story everyone wants to hear. You'll advocate for your child at school without the fear that asking for help means admitting you can't handle this.
You'll grieve what you lost without the grief swallowing your whole week. Whether the grief is about infertility, a failed match, the biological connection you'll never have with your child, or the version of family life you pictured before reality set in, it won’t eclipse the joy. You’ll be able to attend a baby shower without needing to leave early. You'll fill out the school medical history form with its blank spaces and move on with your afternoon instead of carrying it into the next day.
You'll sleep through the night and have energy left for your own life. The 3am anxiety spirals, the ones where you replay every mistake and plan for every catastrophe, will lose their frequency and their intensity. You'll fall asleep without running through tomorrow's potential disasters, wake up without the dread already sitting on your chest, and have enough energy left after the kids are in bed to read something that has nothing to do with adoption or parenting or trauma.
You'll remember that you're a person outside of being this child's parent. Somewhere in the crisis management and the appointments and the IEP meetings and the constant vigilance, you lost track of the parts of yourself that existed before all of this. You'll pick up a hobby you abandoned three years ago, make plans with a friend and keep them, have a conversation about something other than your child's progress, and make a decision about your own career or your own life without the guilt telling you that wanting something for yourself means you're taking something from your family.
You'll have more of yourself to bring home at the end of the day. When your body stops running on high alert all the time, when the depression isn't draining your reserves before noon, when the shame stops taking up so much space, you simply have more to give. Not because you've tried harder or pushed through, but because the weight you've been carrying has gotten lighter. You'll return a friend's text, sit on the floor and play with your child without watching the clock, have a real conversation with your partner after the kids go to bed, and feel like a person who's living their life instead of just surviving it.
Specialized adoption therapy for adoptive & foster parents in Sacramento and Northern California
Online adoption therapy in Sacramento, including Roseville, El Dorado Hills, Elk Grove, Folsom, Davis, Rocklin, Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights, Fair Oaks, Carmichael, Granite Bay, and surrounding communities. Also serving the East Bay and all of California.
Meet Summer
I'm Summer Verhines, LCSW (California LCSW #68507).
I work with adoptive parents throughout El Dorado Hills and the Sacramento area because I understand that adoption doesn't just affect your child, it profoundly impacts you too.
I've been licensed to independently practice in California since 2015. I have 9 years of experience in child welfare and adoption and I am C.A.S.E. registered (Center for Adoption Support and Education) through completing training with the National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI).
I specialize in supporting adoptive parents through their own mental health challenges: post-adoption depression, secondary trauma, and the grief and burnout that comes with this journey.
Using specialized trauma approaches, I help you heal from failed adoptions, process your own trauma responses, and find sustainable ways to manage ongoing stress without losing yourself in the process.
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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All sessions are conducted online through secure telehealth. You can meet with me from anywhere in California - your home, office, or even your car if that's the only private space available. For El Dorado Hills parents juggling work, therapy appointments, school meetings, and everything else, virtual sessions eliminate commute time and maximize scheduling flexibility.
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Traditional talk therapy helps you understand thoughts and process feelings, which has value but often isn't enough when trauma is stored in your body. The specialized approaches I use - EMDR, Brainspotting, Accelerated Resolution Therapy, Internal Family Systems, and Somatic therapy - work directly with your nervous system to release trauma at a deeper level. These aren't just coping strategies; they help your brain and body actually process and resolve traumatic experiences so they stop controlling your present. Many adoptive parents find that years of traditional therapy helped them understand their struggles without actually relieving them - nervous system-based trauma work creates the real change.
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It depends on what you're working on and which approaches we use. Accelerated Resolution Therapy is designed for focused short-term work - many parents experience significant relief within 3-5 sessions when addressing specific traumatic memories like a failed adoption or placement disruption. Others work with me for several months to process multiple layers of adoption trauma: infertility grief, failed placements, post-adoption depression, secondary trauma from their child's behaviors. Traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy often takes years to see meaningful change - these body-based methods are significantly more efficient. We'll discuss your specific goals in our first session and create a realistic timeline.
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Absolutely. I work with adoptive parents at every stage: waiting to be matched, supporting a birth mother through pregnancy, recovering from a failed placement, navigating foster-to-adopt uncertainty, newly home with your child, or years into parenting. Your struggles are valid regardless of where you are in the process - you don't need to wait for finalization to get support.
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I'm a private-pay provider because it allows me to focus on what actually helps you heal rather than what insurance companies reimburse, which is often limited to approaches that don't work well for adoption trauma. However, I can provide detailed Superbills for out-of-network reimbursement if your insurance plan offers that benefit. Many adoptive parents find that investing in specialized trauma therapy saves them years of ineffective but insurance-covered talk therapy that doesn't address root issues.