Online Therapy in California, Florida, and New York
No commute, no waiting room, no hour lost to parking. Therapy in the place you already feel most like yourself.
The hardest part of therapy is usually getting to it. The commute across town, the hour carved out of a workday, the waiting room where someone might recognize you. Those barriers stopped plenty of people long before a first session ever happened.
Online therapy removes them. If you are in California, Florida, or New York, support is available wherever you already are: your living room, your parked car, your lunch break. Here is how it works, who it fits, and what the research actually says.
What an Online Session Actually Looks Like
A session is fifty minutes on secure video. You get a link, you click it at your appointment time, and we talk. There is no app to learn and nothing to install.
What you need is genuinely short:
A device with a camera, which can be a phone, a tablet, or a laptop
A reliable internet connection
A place where you can speak without being overheard for fifty minutes
Headphones, which are optional but help more than people expect
That third item is the one worth planning for. Most people default to a bedroom or a home office. Plenty of my clients take sessions from a parked car, which is private, soundproof enough, and available at lunch. Some walk into a room, put on headphones, and tell the household the door is closed for an hour. There is no wrong answer as long as you are not managing an audience while you talk.
Does Online Therapy Actually Work?
This is the first question most people have, and it deserves a real answer rather than reassurance.
The largest review on the subject looked at 57 studies covering more than 4,000 clients and found that video sessions produced outcomes essentially equivalent to in-person treatment. The difference between the two was not statistically meaningful (Batastini et al., 2021, Clinical Psychology Review).
The second question is usually about connection: will it feel as personal through a screen? That has been studied too. A 2023 review of 18 studies compared the therapeutic relationship in video sessions against in-person sessions, using ratings from both clients and therapists, and found no significant difference either way (Seuling et al., Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare).
That second finding matters more than the first. The quality of the relationship between a client and a therapist is one of the most reliable predictors of whether therapy helps. If it holds up on video, the rest tends to follow.
None of this means the screen is invisible. It means the work still works.
The Barrier It Removes Is Not Only Distance
Convenience is the obvious argument for online therapy, and it is the least interesting one.
The more consequential barrier is exposure. For a lot of the people I work with, the problem with a waiting room was never the drive. It was the possibility of being seen. If your community is small, if your family does not believe in therapy, if you are the first person in your family to have this kind of job and the first to consider this kind of help, a waiting room is a risk with a name attached.
Online therapy is also the difference between getting care and not getting it for anyone whose schedule was never going to accommodate a two-hour round trip. Parents. People working two jobs. People whose workplace does not tolerate a long midday absence. The hour becomes an hour again instead of an afternoon.
And for people who grew up in households where therapy was treated as something for other people, starting from your own home rather than a clinical office lowers the temperature of the first session considerably. That is not a small thing. Many of the people I see waited years before booking, and almost none of them regret starting. Most of them wish they had started sooner.
If any of that sounds familiar, I have written more about it in Immigrant Mental Health: What Children of Immigrants Carry and Navigating Work as a First-Generation Professional.
Where You Need to Be
This is the part almost nobody explains clearly, so here it is plainly.
Therapy is regulated by the state where you are sitting during the session, not the state where your therapist is. A license is permission to practice with people located in that state. That means you can work with me if you are physically in California, Florida, or New York at the time of our session.
A few practical consequences:
If you travel. A session while you are in a state I am not licensed in is not something I can do, even if we have been working together for a year. If you know a trip is coming, tell me and we will schedule around it.
If you move. If you relocate to a state where I am not licensed, our work together has to end or transfer. I will help you find someone and make the handoff as clean as I can. Tell me early rather than late.
If you split your time between two of these three states. That is fine. All three are covered.
Where you live is not the question. Where you are sitting is. Someone who lives in Nevada but works in Los Angeles on Tuesdays can have a Tuesday session.
Who Online Therapy Fits Well
It works well for anxiety, burnout, perfectionism, work stress, identity and family pressure, life transitions, and the long list of things that are hard to say out loud. Those are also most of what I treat.
It fits especially well if you are working long hours, if privacy matters to you, if you have tried to start therapy before and the logistics defeated you, or if you would rather have this conversation somewhere you already feel safe.
When It Is Not the Right Fit
I would rather tell you this now than in a third session.
Online therapy is not the right level of care if you are in an active crisis, if you are having thoughts of harming yourself, or if you need daily support, medical monitoring, or a higher level of care such as an intensive outpatient program. Those situations need more than a weekly video session, and the responsible thing is to say so.
It is also difficult if you have nowhere private to be. If every room in your home has someone in it and a car is not an option, we should talk about that on the consultation call rather than discover it in week three.
If you are in immediate danger, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or call 911.
Privacy
Sessions run on a HIPAA-compliant video platform, which means the connection is encrypted and the service is bound by the same confidentiality rules that apply in any therapy office.
The practical privacy question is usually about your end rather than mine: who else is in the house, and whether headphones solve it. We can sort that out together.
Getting Started
The first step is a free consultation. It is a short call, there is no obligation, and the purpose is to find out whether I am the right person for what you are carrying. If I am not, I will say so and point you somewhere better.
On cost and coverage. My full fee is $225 per session. I hold a limited number of sliding scale spots, and you can read how that works and how to ask for one in my post on fees and the sliding scale.
I am in network with Cigna in California. I also accept Modern Health and Corporate Counseling and Associates EAP benefits, which many employers provide at no cost to you. If you have out-of-network benefits through another plan, I provide superbills, and you can submit them yourself or use Mentaya to file for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
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For most common concerns, yes. A review of 57 studies covering more than 4,000 clients found outcomes from video sessions essentially equivalent to in-person treatment, and a separate review found no significant difference in the strength of the therapeutic relationship. Online therapy is not the right level of care for active crisis or for anyone who needs daily support or medical monitoring.
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You have to be physically located in one of those three states during the session. Where you live matters less than where you are sitting. I am licensed in all three.
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If you are traveling to a state where I am not licensed, we reschedule around the trip. If you move permanently, our work has to end or transfer to a therapist licensed where you now live, and I will help you find one
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A phone, tablet, or laptop with a camera, a reliable internet connection, and a place where you can talk privately for fifty minutes. Headphones help. There is nothing to install
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Sessions run on a HIPAA-compliant encrypted platform and are not recorded. The same confidentiality rules apply as in any therapy office.
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I am in network with Cigna in California, and I accept Modern Health and Corporate Counseling and Associates EAP benefits. For other plans I provide superbills for out-of-network reimbursement, or you can use Mentaya to submit claims.
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Yes. I am bilingual in Spanish and English, and sessions can be conducted in either language.
