Maybe it started in pregnancy, when the excitement everyone promised got tangled up with a dread you couldn't explain. Maybe it hit after the baby came, when the fog lifted but you didn't come back with it. Or maybe your kids aren't babies anymore and you're still waiting to feel like yourself, still snapping faster than you want to, still lying awake doing mental inventory of everyone's needs but your own.
You've probably gotten good at the performance. The "I'm fine." The capable face. The thing where you keep everyone else's world running while yours quietly shrinks.
You love your kids in a way that physically hurts. You're also exhausted, touched out, and quietly wondering where you went.
Both of those things can be true at the same time. Neither of them makes you a bad mom.
You don't have to perform here.
Hi, I'm Dr. Melissa Treff
I'm a psychologist, a Perinatal Mental Health Certified provider, and a mom who has lived the solo parenting weeks, the postpartum fog, and the identity questions no one warns you about. My youngest was one when I opened this practice. I was figuring it out in real time, just like the moms I was already seeing in session.
I help moms, parents, and teens work through the hard stuff, with real clinical depth and zero pretending.
Whatever brought you here, there's a place for it.
For the mom holding it all together
Pregnancy anxiety that won't quiet down. Postpartum rage that scares you. The invisible load, the identity loss, the patterns from your own childhood showing up in how you parent. Whether you're expecting, newly postpartum, or years past it and still in the thick of it, this is the work I'm most specialized in.
For the brain that works differently
Maybe you just got diagnosed. Maybe you've been wondering for years, and having kids turned the volume up on everything. If you're navigating ADHD, autism, or AuDHD, the rejection sensitivity, the burnout from masking, the shame that was never yours to carry, I offer neurodivergent-affirming therapy and comprehensive psychological assessments.
You're willing to look at the deeper stuff when surface-level coping stops cutting it.
You want a therapist who will actually engage, not just nod and ask how that makes you feel.
You're self-aware enough to know something needs to change, and tired of white-knuckling it alone.
You're a mom or parent who is functioning on the outside and running on empty underneath.
Therapy with me is probably right for you if...
You'd rather have honesty with warmth than comfort with no movement.
You're in crisis and need immediate or intensive care. This practice doesn't provide emergency services, and you deserve a level of support I can't responsibly offer in weekly outpatient therapy. If that's where you are, please go to your nearest emergency room or call or text 988.
You want someone who will only validate and never challenge. I'll always be kind, and I'll also be honest.
You're looking for a quick fix or a few scripted tools and done. Real change tends to take more than that, and I won't pretend otherwise.
And it might not be, if...
"Melissa is a perfect combination of being warm, relational, and scientifically grounded in her approach to perinatal mental health. She understands the pressure put on women and moms to be perfect and selfless. She knows how to support women in challenging these expectations and learning how to also take care of ourselves. She’s an incredible person and therapist, especially for neurodivergent moms looking for therapy."
- Jenna Brownfield
A lot of therapists list "moms" as a specialty.
I'm a licensed psychologist with a PsyD and 10-plus years of post-licensure clinical experience. I hold the PMH-C credential, the gold standard in perinatal mental health, held by fewer than 1,600 psychologists in the country. I use ACT, IFS, and CBT, not because they're trendy, but because they work. And I'm not afraid to gently push toward the deeper relational work when that's what your situation actually calls for.
Here's what's underneath mine
Just as important: I'm in it too.
The solo parenting stretches, the mental load, the cut flower garden I escape to every spring. When you sit across from me, you won't have to explain motherhood from scratch. We can skip to the part where things start to change.
