Where I practice
Telehealth therapy in California
I hold a California clinical licence, so I can see you anywhere in the state: a house in Humboldt County, an apartment in San Diego, a spare room in Fresno. What matters is where you are sitting, not how far that is from me.
Licensed here, not just willing to work here
There is a difference between a therapist who will take a California client and one who is licensed to. I hold LCSW-19941, issued by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, alongside my Colorado licence.
The rule is about where you are sitting, not where you live.
A therapist has to be licensed in the state where you are physically located at the moment of the session. Not where you pay taxes, not where your driving licence was issued. Where you are, that hour.
So I will ask at the start where you will actually be, and it is worth knowing what that means before it catches you out. If you travel out of state for two weeks, we generally cannot meet while you are gone. That is far easier to plan around than to discover on a Tuesday morning from a hotel room in Phoenix.
What the distance stops mattering for
California is a large state, and clinicians are not evenly spread across it. Plenty of people live an hour or more from the nearest therapist taking new clients, and plenty more live ten minutes away from forty of them and still cannot get an appointment.
Telehealth removes the part of that problem that is about geography. There is no drive across a metro at five in the afternoon, no waiting room, no reception desk, and nobody who recognizes you. You need somewhere private, a reasonable connection, and to be inside the state.
What I work on
Most of it is ordinary, good therapy: depression, anxiety, trauma and PTSD, stress and burnout, transitions and grief. Some of it is less ordinary, and those are the reasons people travel a long way, or in this case a long way in the only sense that still applies.
- General therapy
- First responders, including correctional health, patrol and co-responder work
- Executives and senior professionals
- Men's issues
- Parents of children with autism and developmental disabilities
- Parents of a child with serious mental illness
Practical notes for California
- Sessions
- 60 minutes, by telehealth
- Where
- Anywhere in California, provided you are physically in the state at the time
- Licence
- LCSW-19941, California Board of Behavioral Sciences
- Time zone
- I am on Mountain Time, an hour ahead of you. My early morning is earlier still in your day, which suits people who would rather be seen before work than after it.
- Fees
- $200 a session, no insurance billed
- Availability
- Accepting new clients. First appointment usually about two weeks out.