What if there’s nothing wrong with you?
Meet Jessica Brohmer, LMFT | Online therapy for grief and anxiety based in Aptos, CA
What if your grief and anxiety aren't signs that you're broken, but natural, expected responses to the life you've experienced and the people and places you've deeply loved?
That doesn’t make what you’re going through any less difficult
People don't come to therapy because life feels easy. You're here because something is wrong, missing, painful, or just off in some way.
Maybe your anxiety is a completely understandable response to uncertainty… but you still desperately want a good night's sleep without tossing and turning over your worries for hours.
Maybe your grief is a natural expression of love and loss… and understanding it still doesn't make it easier when the waves of grief hit you in the middle of the grocery store.
Hi, I’m Jessica
I believe that life is deeply meaningful even when it’s deeply painful because it’s all part of being human. I walk with people through life's most difficult seasons from grief to anxiety to working through early childhood stuff that’s still affecting you. We're not going to "fix" your grief or solve every problem your anxiety brings up, and here’s why…
Understanding doesn't take the pain away, but it does give the hurt some context. When we make sense of what's happening in our minds and bodies, we can learn to tune into what our body is saying and hear the message under the pain that it’s trying to communicate. And from that place, we have a new option: to do something that genuinely helps rather than trying to push away the hurt or make it stop.
Together, we’ll chart a new course where we:
Approach difficult emotions and experiences gently, with curiosity rather than rejection or avoidance
Learn to understand what your mind and body may be trying to communicate to you so you can meet those genuine needs in other ways
Change your messages of self-criticism, blame, shame, and regret into an inner dialogue full of kindness toward yourself and others
Discern when your emotions need care and when it’s time to push through
Build confidence in your ability to handle life’s inevitable ups and downs with resilience
Explore the values, relationships, and people that give your life meaning
I’m not here to tell you that you can ever eliminate grief or anxiety. Our work together will help you understand them well enough that they no longer keep you from participating fully in your own life.
I’ve walked through grief and anxiety myself
Like many of my clients, I’ve been through seasons of life that felt overwhelming, painful, and impossible to navigate. I know what it feels like to desperately want the pain to stop and the anxious spiral to end, to know things will be okay. I know how helpless it feels when trying harder, thinking differently, and fighting against my own experience doesn’t work, but that’s the only thing you know how to do.
These life experiences sparked a deep curiosity in me. I wanted to understand why our minds and bodies respond the way they do through times of loss, uncertainty, and change. I wanted to understand why grief is so disorienting and why the pain lessens but never really goes away entirely. I wanted to understand why anxious thoughts feel so overwhelming and why anxiety seems to resonate through the whole body, not just the mind. It’s no wonder so many people going through grief and anxiety come away believing something is wrong with them.
What I ultimately learned is this: Our responses make far more sense than we often realize. That belief transformed my own relationship with grief and anxiety and informs the way I practice therapy.
I believe understanding creates space for healing
I’ve spent years studying the neuroscience of grief and anxiety, learning from leading researchers and continually deepening my understanding of what helps people move through painful and difficult experiences with resilience. My approach draws from research, clinical training, lived experience, and the wisdom of the clients who have invited me to be their companion through the dark parts of their journeys.
Through it all is a simple message: Grief is not something to just get over. Anxiety isn’t a sign that something is wrong with you. And you don’t need to walk through the difficult parts of life alone.
Our minds and bodies are trying to communicate something important. When we slow down enough to listen to those messages with curiosity rather than fear, we can address the roots of the pain and help bring peace and healing to the difficult seasons of life.
All behavior makes sense in context
My clients often say that therapy with me helps put thoughts and feelings that seem irrational on the surface into context where we can understand them. Many of my clients are often thoughtful, analytical people who are frustrated by the fact that grief and anxiety often don’t seem logical. They tell themselves they shouldn’t be anxious, shouldn’t feel grief this intensely, shouldn’t be reacting this way.
But the reality is that they are. Rather than arguing with those experiences, I invite my clients to get curious about them. What might your mind be trying to protect? What matters enough to make such a strong response? What makes this reaction understandable in the context of your life?
I’ve found that deep transformation starts when we stop asking “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking “What makes sense about this?”
What it feels like to work with me
I believe everything is interconnected and that the little tangents are important threads that we can follow deeper into the heart of the matter. That means I usually don’t take charge in the beginning to direct our sessions. Instead, I’ll follow your lead as you share what feels important including thoughts you’re stuck on, memories that keep popping up, or dreams that seem to speak to a theme that’s been repeating in your life. These tangents are important parts of the session that point us toward something that your mind is trying to understand or process through.
I want you to become curious about your internal experience, so that’s the kind of relationship I’ll model for you as we talk. We might slow down, pause, and reflect on particular parts of an event. I might point out things I’m noticing across several different parts of your life that seem related. I’ll ask you to tease apart the different parts of your experience and name what’s going on in your head, what’s happening in your body, and the emotions you’re feeling.
Along the way, I’ll invite you to try little experiments as we see what resonates with you. And I’ll ask you to keep trying those things during the week so we make sure this goes beyond just talking about your experience and actually touches the rest of your life. Some of these exercises will be experiential, but a lot of it is a process of noticing and observing your inner experience. Many of my clients come to session with pages of notes they’ve taken during the week of their observations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and experiences. Others come as they are, preferring to stay in the present moment and trust the process of deep inner work to bring important pieces to light through our conversation.
To me, the work of therapy is like tending a garden together. It’s an ongoing process, not one big transformation that changes things once and for all. Sometimes it’s taking out flowers you don’t like and replacing them with ones you prefer. Other times, it’s weeding out thick spiky thorns and digging up buried rocks so we can start planting. And sometimes it’s noticing that you have everything you like but it’s just not flourishing, so we need to dig down and address deeper, more fundamental issues in the soil.
Learn more about my specialties
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Grief Therapy
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Anxiety Therapy
Therapy Methods
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Mindfulness Skills
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
Inference-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
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Trauma Therapy
Somatic and Attachment Focused Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
Written Exposure Therapy
Brainspotting
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Depth Work
Narrative Therapy
Existential Therapy
Somatic Therapy
Psychodynamic Therapy
Training and Experience
Education and Licensure
CA Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist #119280
MA, Western Seminary
BA, San Jose State University
Certificate in Drug and Alcohol Studies, San Jose City College
Training and Certifications
Somatic and Attachment Focused EMDR
Advanced Grief Counseling
Traumatic Grief
Pregnancy and Infant Loss
Christian Therapy
Narrative Therapy
Existential Therapy
Interpersonal Neurobiology