Do You Need Therapy? A Different Conversation for Mothers
I am the therapist of mother therapists. And this is what they tell me.
I have been the therapist of many mother therapists.
I have spent years inside the counseling field—as a licensed therapist, a graduate-level educator in counseling, and the director of a counseling department. I have trained future therapists, helped shape clinical programs, and worked directly with people navigating life's most profound transitions. And yet, the more I worked within the system, the more I saw its limitations—especially for mothers.
Again and again, I sit with mother therapists—women trained in clinical models, who have spent their careers inside the world of diagnosis, treatment plans, and symptom management. And they tell me the same thing:
“I was never trained in this.”
They mean the unraveling of self that happens in matrescence. The grief of losing who you were before motherhood. The existential rupture that comes when you realize motherhood will never be as individualistic as therapy tells us it should be. The kind of work I do—naming matrescence as a passage, framing motherhood as an initiation, guiding women through the undoing and reweaving of identity--is absent from most clinical training programs.
Not because it isn't necessary, but because the institutions that control credentialing and licensure have systematically pushed feminist, decolonial, and relational ways of working into the margins. They are considered “advanced material”—something for after you've mastered the “foundational” theories.
This means that the dominant frameworks of mental health—the ones most therapists are trained in—are built on models that were never designed for women, never designed for mothers, and certainly never designed for those who experience identity as relational rather than individualistic.
So let's sit with the question: Do you need therapy?
Or do you need a completely different way of being held?
Why Therapy Became the Default for Mothers
Counseling did not begin as a medicalized profession.
Its origins were in education, human development, and vocational guidance—it was a field designed to help people navigate life transitions, integrate meaning, and make informed decisions about who they were becoming. It was about growth, identity formation, and self-understanding—not pathology and treatment.
But as counseling sought legitimacy within medical and institutional systems, it moved toward a diagnosis-and-treatment model. This shift was not accidental—it was about power, professional credibility, and financial access.
To be reimbursed by insurance, counseling had to align itself with medicine.
To be respected as a “real” profession, it had to adopt the language of disorder and dysfunction.
To be regulated and licensed, it had to define itself in clinical terms.
This is why most therapy frameworks are individualistic, symptom-focused, and bound to diagnostic criteria—because this is what was required for counseling to be taken seriously within medical and state systems.
And this is why, when a mother experiences distress, she is automatically sent into clinical spaces—even when her pain is not a sign of illness, but of change.
Feeling lost after a miscarriage? Therapy.
Can't recognize yourself after birth? Therapy.
Overwhelmed by eco-grief while raising children? Therapy.
Can't integrate who you were before and who you are now? Therapy.
But these are not disorders. These are initiations.
And an initiation does not need to be treated.
It needs to be witnessed, guided, and integrated.
Rites of Passage and the Missing Map for Mothers
For most of human history, rites of passage existed to hold transformation.
They were structured, communal processes that provided:
1. Recognition that a transformation was occurring.
2. A guided process of disintegration and reintegration.
3. A re-emergence into the community with a new identity.
These passages were not treated as problems to be solved. They were held thresholds—spaces where the individual could let go of who they were and step into who they were becoming with guidance, structure, and support.
Matrescence, the transition into motherhood, is one of the most profound rites of passage a person can experience.
And yet, in modern culture, it is completely unrecognized.
No language for the passage.
No initiation.
No structured transition.
No acknowledgment that you are becoming someone new.
And when a passage is left unrecognized, unsupported, and unnamed, it often manifests as distress.
Not because you are broken.
Not because you need therapy.
But because you are undergoing an initiation with no map and no guides.
Does That Mean Therapy is the Wrong Choice?
Sometimes therapy is exactly what is needed.
If you are experiencing clinical depression, PTSD, postpartum psychosis, or trauma responses that are impacting your daily life, therapy can be life-saving.
But therapy was never meant to be the only option.
Therapists, especially those trained in the medical model, are often not trained to hold transformation as an unfolding process. They are trained to reduce symptoms, alleviate distress, and return people to a functional baseline.
But what if you don't need to return to baseline?
What if you are not meant to go back, but to go through?
Mentorship: A Different Way of Holding Matrescence
Most therapists were never trained to hold matrescence as a passage.
Most therapy frameworks do not recognize the grief, rupture, and meaning-making process that motherhood demands.
And so, mothers are sent into clinical spaces, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of cultural default, when what they truly need is something else entirely.
Something older than therapy.
Something relational.
Something that understands that mothers do not need to be fixed. They need to be held in their becoming.
This is what maternal mentorship is for.
Not to replace therapy, but to provide the missing space for:
Honoring identity shifts instead of labeling them as dysfunction.
Holding big questions instead of reducing them to symptoms.
Providing a map for passages instead of treating distress as a disorder.
Helping mothers integrate who they were with who they are becoming instead of forcing them to “bounce” back.
Because matrescence is not a diagnosis. It is a fundamental reordering of self.
The Risks of Therapy for Nonclinical Issues in This Political Moment
It’s not just that therapy might not be the right fit for you.
It’s that, in this current political climate, therapy might not be the safest choice.
The rollback of reproductive rights, the expansion of maternal surveillance policies, and the increasing use of “maternal mental health crisis” language in policy initiatives have created an environment where seeking therapy for nonclinical issues can carry unintended risks.
As a counselor educator, I know that most therapists are not being adequately trained to provide detailed, ongoing informed consent—especially regarding the risks of therapy in this political climate. But informed consent is not a one-time signature on an intake form—it is an ongoing conversation, one that should equip clients with a full understanding of how their disclosures may be documented, interpreted, and, in some cases, acted upon without their consent.
Mandated reporting laws vary widely and can leave too much discretion to individual providers, some of whom may be influenced by personal biases or institutional pressures.
Maternal mental health screenings are expanding in ways that blur the line between support and surveillance, particularly in hospitals and medical settings.
State intervention into motherhood is increasing, with mental health rhetoric being used to justify more oversight, not more autonomy.
These realities do not mean therapy is inherently dangerous. But in this moment, it is not neutral.
And when therapy is the only option mothers are given for support, we have to ask:
Who benefits from keeping maternal distress inside a clinical system?
A Different Kind of Support for a Different Kind of Transformation
So let's return to the question:
A mother therapist recently told me, “I spent years training to be a therapist, and yet no one ever prepared me for what motherhood would do to me. I know the DSM, I know treatment plans, but I don’t know how to hold this passage for myself.”
Do you need therapy?
Or do you need a space that was built for holding mothers inside their unraveling and re-emergence?
If you've ever sat across from a therapist and felt like something was missing.
If you've ever been given a diagnosis when what you really needed was a guide.
If you've ever left a session feeling like your transformation was being treated instead of integrated.
Then maybe you don’t need therapy.
Maybe you need something else.
Because motherhood was never meant to be a disorder.
It was always meant to be an initiation.
I love how you have articulated this