Meet Tessa Ritchie—Therapist at Best Therapists

Together, my clients and I work in collaboration to explore the ways life has become unmanageable and learn how to utilize their strengths to untangle that web. My personal therapy style combines solution-focused therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing-EMDR. I have been working as a mental health professional since 2013 and am a licensed professional clinical counselor (LPCC#6250) in the state of California. I have spent 7+ years working in the non-profit sector, first with child survivors of human sex trafficking and then with families of youth that are at-risk for entering the juvenile justice system. Through these experiences, I had the privilege of working with many young mothers as they navigated the peripartum experience with limited resources. I continued my work as a clinical supervisor in the public sector and as a faculty member at Point Loma Nazarene University to teach and support students as they enter the mental health field. In my current clinical practice, I specialize in treating perinatal individuals and their partners, with an emphasis on first time parents, parents with a history of personal or family addiction, and couples experiencing difficulty with communication during the transitions of parenthood.

My own journey through motherhood and experiences with postpartum anxiety sparked a passion for focusing my clinical practice on women and couples entering parenthood. I found that each person's postpartum experience comes with a different set of challenges. Gathering data from a book is helpful, but processing your unique experiences and changing identities is essential to developing stability as a parent and within your partnership. My main goal is to support individuals and couples as they navigate the complexities of parenthood, from infertility and conception to pregnancy and birth and finally into the postpartum period and early parenthood. I have received specialty advanced training in perinatal mental health care through Postpartum Support International.

Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor / Boston University 2014