Folsom · Rancho Cordova · California Telehealth
Therapy for moms who are doing more than anyone sees.
Therapy for moms with Amanda McBee, LMFT, is individual therapy for the mom carrying the mental and emotional load of her family, offered in person in Rancho Cordova and by telehealth across California.
Mothering can feel overwhelming in ways that do not always show on the outside, especially when anxiety, the household load, or repeating relationship patterns leave you feeling exhausted and second-guessing yourself. I work with moms in Folsom, Rancho Cordova, and across California who are managing their families well in public and quietly running on empty in private. This is therapy that supports you as the person doing the carrying, beyond self-care advice and productivity techniques that do not address what is actually wearing thin.
Amanda McBee, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT)
It is a no-pressure conversation to see if we are a good fit.
What this often looks like
Told to take better care of yourself, when that is not the problem.
The moms I work with often describe some version of the following: snapping at their children and feeling guilty afterward, carrying the mental and emotional load for the whole household and feeling unseen in it, anticipating other people's moods and adjusting around them automatically, lying awake at night anxious about their kids or their marriage, struggling to know what they actually want when they are not in caretaker mode, and noticing the same patterns from their own childhood showing up in how they parent.
Many of them have been told some version of “you need to take better care of yourself” and find that it does not address what is actually going on. The work in therapy explores what is happening beneath that surface, including identity, the household load, family-of-origin patterns, and the relationship dynamics around parenting.
What we do in the work
Most sessions look closer to a real conversation than a step-by-step protocol. We move at a pace that lets us name what is actually happening at home and inside you, and we look at the patterns and the load behind the day-to-day stress. The work often touches identity, family-of-origin patterns, boundaries with family and partner, and the version of yourself that exists when you are not in caretaking mode.
When more structured tools will help the work, I bring them in. I draw on cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, Brainspotting, schema therapy, solution-focused work, and a person-centered baseline, shaping the therapy around the person I am working with.
When you're the overwhelmed one
When the carrying is invisible.
Most of the moms I work with are functioning well from the outside while feeling exhausted and second-guessing themselves on the inside. The carrying is structural, not a personal weakness, and the word that most often shows up is overwhelm. It looks like running the household on no sleep and answering everyone else's needs before you have noticed your own. It looks like saying “I'm fine” so often that you forget what it would feel like to say something else.
Therapy can be a space to look at the carrying itself, instead of trying to optimize around it.
Codependent parenting patterns
The cost of self-erasure.
Codependent patterns often show up most clearly in parenting. The carrying takes a shape, and the shape is often invisible to everyone except the person doing the carrying. It can look like anticipating your child's mood before they have expressed it, anticipating your partner's mood before he has expressed it, and adjusting yourself around both of them so automatically that you cannot name what you actually wanted in the first place. Many of the moms I work with describe a version of this and have stopped knowing how to set themselves down inside of it.
The work in therapy is not about caring less. It is about looking at the pattern of self-erasure and noticing what was being protected by it.
Boundaries with your mother
The work nobody warns you about.
Becoming a mother sometimes brings the relationship with your own mother back into the room in ways no one warned you about. The dynamic that you thought you had managed in adulthood reappears around bedtime, around birthday visits, around a parenting decision that gets read as a referendum on her parenting. Many of the moms I see are exhausted and second-guessing themselves in this specific place, where the wish for support and the cost of asking for it sit too close together.
The work in therapy looks at the pattern itself, including what has held it in place across years and what tends to shift when it gets named.
Related areas of work
Common questions
Common questions about therapy for moms.
What is therapy for moms?
Therapy for moms is general individual therapy with a clinician who specializes in the experience of being a mom. The work tends to focus on the mental and emotional load of running a household, identity shifts, family-of-origin patterns showing up in parenting, anxiety, codependency, and the relationship dynamics around parenting.
Do I need to have a specific diagnosis to come to therapy?
No. Many of the moms I work with are not in clinical crisis. They are functional and stretched thin and want a space to look at what is happening underneath the day-to-day pressure.
Is this therapy for postpartum issues specifically?
Postpartum and perinatal mental health is its own clinical area. I work with new and expecting parents, and I am not a perinatal-mood-disorders specialty practice. If a different level of care may be appropriate, we talk about that directly.
Can we meet online?
Yes. I see clients in person at my office in Rancho Cordova and via telehealth across California.
Do you take insurance?
I am out-of-network with insurance. I provide superbills you can submit to your insurance company for possible reimbursement, depending on your plan's out-of-network mental health benefits.
Practical details
In person
11121 Sun Center Drive, Suite F1, Rancho Cordova, CA 95670.
Telehealth
Available to clients located anywhere in California, by secure video.
Service area
Sacramento Metro East, including Folsom, Rancho Cordova, Roseville, El Dorado Hills, and Cameron Park for in-person sessions. California-wide by video.
Fees
$170 per 50-minute session. A limited number of sliding-scale spots are available, please ask.
Take the first step
Support for the person doing the carrying.
The first conversation is fifteen minutes, free, and no paperwork. We talk about what is going on for you and where it makes sense to start.
(916) 337-8714 · amanda@amandamcbee.com