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Find a Jewish female therapist in Brentwood

I'm Dr. Jené Verchick, a Jewish psychologist with over 26 years of experience. I work with adults, teens, and couples in Brentwood and across the Westside via secure video sessions.

Brentwood is a neighborhood that runs on forward motion — high-achieving careers, ambitious kids, packed schedules, and the expectation that everything looks effortless. Underneath that, many of my Brentwood clients are carrying anxiety they can't name, marriages they're holding together with willpower, and a persistent feeling that something is off despite having built exactly the life they planned.

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If you're looking for a Jewish therapist who understands both the cultural weight of your background and the specific pressures of Brentwood life, you've found one.

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How I Work

I'm active and direct. I don't do the kind of therapy where you talk about your week and I nod sympathetically for fifty minutes.

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When I see the pattern — the perfectionism disguised as ambition, the conflict avoidance disguised as keeping the peace, the guilt that drives every decision about your parents, your kids, your career — I name it. And I help you respond differently, right there in the session.

With couples, I interrupt the dynamic in real time. With individuals, I get underneath the performance. With teens, I'm honest with them in a way that earns respect instead of eye-rolls.

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Brentwood After the Fires

The Palisades fire changed Brentwood. Even though the neighborhood wasn't destroyed, the evacuation was real — the fear was real, the disruption was real, and for many families the psychological aftershock is still present. Some of you watched the flames from your street. Some packed the car at 2am not knowing if you'd have a home to come back to. Some came back to a standing house and felt guilty for being relieved when your neighbors in the Palisades lost everything.

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Trauma doesn't always look like the worst-case scenario. Sometimes it looks like the sleeplessness that started during the evacuation and never stopped. The anxiety that spikes every time you smell smoke. The marriage that cracked under the pressure of crisis and hasn't healed. The kids who won't talk about it but aren't the same.

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I work with individuals, couples, and families processing fire-related trauma — the acute kind and the kind that shows up months later when you thought you were fine.

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Who I Work With

Couples. Brentwood marriages carry a particular kind of pressure — two demanding careers, social expectations, family obligations, and the unspoken competition of a neighborhood where everyone seems to be doing it better. I work with couples on emotional distance, communication breakdown, betrayal, enmeshment with in-laws, and the slow erosion that happens when the marriage becomes the last priority. See my Brentwood couples therapy page.

Individuals. Anxiety, depression, burnout, grief, divorce, trauma, identity crisis. Many of my Brentwood clients are high-functioning people who've been performing for so long they don't know what they actually feel anymore. 

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Teens. Brentwood teens carry an enormous load — whether they're at Brentwood School, Archer, Paul Revere, or Pali High, the academic pressure is relentless. Add the social hierarchy, the college admissions arms race, social media, and family expectations and you have a generation of kids who look fine and feel terrible. I hold a Master's in Child, Adolescent, and Family Therapy from USC. Learn more about teen therapy.

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Families. Divorce, blended families, enmeshment, sibling conflict, caregiving for aging parents. When the whole system is stuck. Learn more about family therapy.

 

What Being a Jewish Therapist in Brentwood Means

Brentwood has a significant Jewish community — University Synagogue, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple's Brentwood campus, Leo Baeck Temple just up the hill in Bel Air. Many of my clients are members of these congregations or grew up in Jewish families even if they're not actively affiliated.

 

What a Jewish therapist brings to the work:

• Understanding that family closeness and family enmeshment are two sides of the same coin — and knowing the difference

• Recognizing the guilt that controls decisions you don't even realize you're making

• Getting why your mother's "suggestion" carries the weight of a command

• Understanding the generational pattern: your grandmother's anxiety became your mother's control became your perfectionism

• Knowing that in your family, success is mandatory and struggle is invisible — and how isolating that combination is

 

I'm culturally Jewish. I don't incorporate religious practice into therapy. But the cultural understanding is woven into everything I do. You don't need to spend sessions explaining the weight. I already feel it.

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What Clients Say

"The evacuation broke something in our marriage. We handled the logistics fine — packed the car, got the kids out, stayed with friends. But underneath, we fell apart. My husband shut down completely and I was running on pure adrenaline for weeks. When we got home, we couldn't talk to each other. Dr. Verchick helped us process what happened — not just the fire, but the way crisis exposed everything we'd been avoiding." — Couple, Brentwood

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"I'm a member at University Synagogue and I couldn't find a Jewish therapist in Brentwood who I didn't already know socially. Dr. Verchick was the solution — she understands my world but isn't in it. That's exactly what I needed." — Brentwood

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"My son is at Brentwood School and the pressure is crushing him. He won't show it there — he performs perfectly. At home he's anxious, irritable, and sleeping twelve hours a day. Dr. Verchick worked with him individually and then brought us in. She helped us see that our expectations were part of the problem. That was hard to hear, but she was right." — Parents, Brentwood

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"I carried guilt about everything — my career, my parenting, my mother, my body. Dr. Verchick helped me see that the guilt wasn't mine. It was inherited — a generational pattern that nobody in my family had ever questioned. Naming it didn't make it disappear, but it loosened its grip. I make decisions for myself now." — Brentwood

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"After my divorce, I stayed in Brentwood for the kids. But everything reminded me of the marriage — the house, the restaurants, the school drop-off. I was stuck in a life that looked the same but felt completely different. Dr. Verchick helped me grieve the marriage and start building something new without running away from the neighborhood my kids call home." — Brentwood

 

Frequently asked questions

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Do I need to be Jewish to work with you?

No. Many of my clients are Jewish, but not all. What matters is that my approach — active, direct, engaged — fits what you need.

 

I'm a member of a Brentwood synagogue. Will you know anyone in my congregation?

No. I have no affiliation with University Synagogue, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, or Leo Baeck Temple. I'm not in your social circle, your kids' school community, or your Shabbat dinner rotation. 

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We were evacuated during the fires. Is it too late to get help?

No. Trauma doesn't follow a timeline. Many people feel fine for weeks or months after a crisis and then the symptoms hit — insomnia, anxiety, irritability, emotional numbness, relationship strain. It's never too late to process what happened.

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My teen is struggling at school but won't talk to me. Can you help?

Yes. Teens rarely open up to the adults who are also the source of their pressure. A therapist who isn't their parent gives them a space to say what they can't say at home. I treat teens like real people and they respond to that.

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How do sessions work?

Online so no parking on San Vicente. Most clients meet weekly.