Before anything else, my job is to help you feel seen, heard, and understood.
That’s where therapy begins with me, and it’s where most of the change quietly comes from.
The relationship we build does more of the work than any single technique.
So I won’t rush you through interventions.
I really try to listen to your story: who you are, how you got here, and what you care about.
To me, the person always comes first.
From there, we shape an approach that fits your values.
Clients have called our sessions kind, compassionate, thoughtful, and even a little playful.
You’ve heard about the five stages, and you’ve felt every one of them.
Yet the sadness is still here, long after everyone expected you to be past it.
Quietly, you wonder if something is wrong with you. Am I going crazy? Why can’t I get over it?
Nothing is wrong with you.
Grief keeps no schedule, and it rarely matches the tidy stages or the well-meaning clichés.
I learned this up close while running grief counseling at a hospice agency, sitting with people through the full magnitude of loss and how it can upend a life.
Grief tends to come in waves.
The goal isn’t to stop the ocean. It’s to have fewer waves, and to stay standing when they come.
Healing here means something gentler than getting over the person you lost.
It means integrating that loss into your daily life, and honoring your loved one as you move forward.
Together, we slow things down enough for your nervous system to settle and feel a little peace.
Part of that is education. Understanding what grief actually does helps loosen the fear that you’re doing it wrong.
When a painful belief keeps surfacing, we follow it gently down to what sits underneath it, then hold it up against what’s actually true for you.
Some of the work is emotionally focused. It helps you stay with what you feel instead of bracing against it.
Later, when the time is right, I’ll sometimes introduce approaches like writing a letter or speaking to an empty chair to say the things that went unsaid.
None of this is rushed.
We move at the pace your grief actually needs.
Grief isn’t the only reason people find me.
Sometimes what’s troubling you is a relationship, or the search for one.
Dating can leave you second-guessing yourself, and a long-term partnership brings its own knots to work through.
Here too, I begin by understanding you and what you actually want.
Your experience leads, and we build from there.
Born and raised in California, I started my professional career in finance before transitioning to this field in 2014, and I’ve been working as a therapist since 2015.
I often get asked what made me decide to leave the finance world to become a therapist.
At some point I realized that I wanted to do more with my life than increase shareholder value.
I once read that it’s impossible not to love someone once you’ve heard their story.
It became my mission to hear people’s stories in therapy, understand them, and help them find a path moving forward.
When I’m not working, I can be found taking my 2 dogs for walks, watching sports, or painting.
If any of this resonates, I’d be glad to talk.
I offer a free 15-minute consultation, a low-key chance to hear a little about what’s going on and see whether we’re a good fit.
There’s no pressure and nothing to prepare.
You can email me at simran@simranbhatialmft.com, and we’ll take it from there.
Things don’t have to keep feeling this way. There is hope, and there is help.
There’s a version of 3 a.m. where the missing sits quietly beside you instead of swallowing the night. That version starts with one honest conversation.
A free 15-minute call. No pressure, and nothing to prepare.
