Libby Orrick (she/her)

Trying to conceive, in treatment, navigating loss or recurrent loss, considering donor conception, or weighing decisions about next steps. This work often includes cycles of hope and grief, difficult or traumatic medical experiences, and strain on your identity, relationship, and sense of time. Fertility scrambles your life in ways most people around you will not fully see, and it can be profoundly lonely. I hold a postgraduate certificate in fertility counseling.

Anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts, identity shifts, relationship strain, body changes, returning to work, and the persistent sense that you should be handling this better than you are. What often gets sold as a singular sacred experience is, in practice, ordinary life turned up tenfold, and most of the difficulty is invisible from the outside. Individual and couples sessions. In-home sessions available for newly postpartum families in San Francisco and parts of Marin.

Roughly one in three women describe their birth as traumatic, often while being told they should feel grateful because the baby is fine. Birth trauma, medical trauma, pregnancy loss, and NICU stays can leave intrusive memories, heightened anxiety, fear around future pregnancies, and changes in intimacy or safety, whether or not you meet criteria for PTSD. I have advanced EMDR training in birth trauma and use it to help process memories that still feel immediate or unresolved.

EMDR is a structured trauma therapy that helps the brain process memories that still feel immediate. I use it primarily for birth trauma, medical trauma, pregnancy loss, and the accumulated stress of fertility treatment, with additional protocol training in reproductive trauma. We do not start with the memory. We start with stabilization and move at a pace that feels most supportive to you. Available weekly or as a half-day, full-day, or two-day EMDR intensive.

DBT skills are for the moments when insight is not what you need. Sleep deprivation, postpartum rage, and the physiological intensity of this period can put you well past the point where understanding why helps. Distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness give you something to do in the moment, including with a partner. I led DBT skills groups during my fellowship at Kaiser Permanente and draw on the skills rather than delivering comprehensive DBT.