"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced."
— James Baldwin
You're here because something needs to change.
This practice is for those who are exceptionally capable in most areas of their life and privately struggling in others. Those who are ready for more than symptom relief. Deeper healing, stronger relationships, real self-understanding, and lasting change.
I work with individuals and couples navigating complex transitions, relationships in crisis, and the internal patterns that are hardest to see from the inside. I don't make assumptions about why you are here or what you should feel. Whatever you are navigating, I bring clinical insight and directness, without judgment, to help you understand what is underneath it.
This is where the deep work happens. We look at the patterns, the relationships, and the decisions that got you here to understand what is helping you and what is keeping you stuck.
If you are ready to dive in, you are in the right place.
Depth, Discretion,
and Real Change
If you have tried therapy before and found it passive, you will find this work different.
is just observation.
My clients are driven, disciplined, and good at doing hard things. They have built careers, companies, and reputations on grit and performance.
You might be in the right place if...The same qualities that fuel high achievement, the drive, the intensity, the relentless forward motion, tend to create the most chaos in intimate relationships and inner life. On some level, many of my clients already know this. What brings them here is the readiness to finally do something about it.
Understanding the past is not about dwelling in it. It is about understanding how you are organized: your beliefs about yourself, others, work, relationships, money, sex. The experiences that shaped you, including the ones you have never fully examined, show up every day in your emotional life and in how you relate to the people around you. They surface as compulsive behaviors, patterns you cannot break, burnout, sleeplessness, and fractures in the relationships that matter most.
"Regina has a way of putting into words feelings and experiences I've never been able to express to anyone. I never feel judged, and I can tell she really cares, even when she's challenging me."
Services
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![Individual Therapy Services for anxiety, perfectionism, lack of fullfilment, sense of nothing being good enough, lack of purpose, burnout, exhaustion, relationship issues, fear of failure, impostor syndrom.]()
Individual Therapy
For people who are exceptionally capable in most areas of their life and privately struggling in others. Executives, lawyers, founders, and high achievers who are used to solving hard problems and have met one they can't think their way out of alone.This work goes beneath the presenting problem to understand what is actually driving it, and builds the internal capacity to handle what comes next. Sessions are direct, substantive, and oriented toward real change rather than indefinite processing.
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![Couples therapy with Regina Abayev, JD LMFT focused on rebuilding intimacy, trust, communication, reducing conflict and navigating difficult life and family transitions.]()
Couples Therapy
For couples at a genuine inflection point. Betrayal. A slow erosion of intimacy that has become impossible to ignore. High conflict that has become the default register of the relationship. The question of whether to stay or go, approached with clarity rather than reactivity. For couples earlier in their relationship, premarital work that builds a genuinely solid foundation rather than just covering the obvious topics. Most couples have been having the same argument for years. This work gets underneath it. -
![Family therapy focused on rebuilding trust, opening communication, healing past hurts and creating loving connection, trust and support.]()
Family Therapy
Families develop patterns that are nearly impossible to see clearly from inside them. This work helps every member of the family understand the system they are part of, take honest responsibility for their role in it, and build something more functional in its place. Including divorce, blended family transitions, and the family member who has been cast as the problem when the truth is more complicated. -
![Group therapy that is transformational and provides real-time feedback on how we are perceived, experienced and supported.]()
Group Therapy
A psychodynamic process group for people who are ready to do serious work in the company of others doing the same. Raw, honest, and deeply relational. The group becomes a live laboratory for understanding how you actually show up in relationships, not how you think you do. For the right person, the growth that happens here is exponential in a way that individual work alone cannot replicate. -
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Infidelity & Betrayal Trauma
The discovery of an affair dismantles more than a relationship. It dismantles the version of reality you were living in. This work follows a specialized, phased approach: stabilizing the crisis, structured disclosure, genuine accountability, and repair. Betrayal trauma is among the most complex areas of couples work, and it requires a therapist with the clinical expertise and experience to guide both partners through it with honesty, skill and precision.
About Me
A Different Kind of Perspective
Before becoming a therapist, I spent twenty years in high-stakes professional environments as a structured finance lawyer and investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Royal Bank of Scotland, as General Counsel and Head of Product at companies that reached unicorn valuations, and as co-founder of a fintech company with a successful exit to private equity.
When you sit across from me, you are not talking to someone who learned about your world from a textbook. I know the cost of keeping everything together when no one is watching. I understand how competence becomes armor. I understand how your public life can look very different from your private one.
Beyond the Symptoms
I work with founders, lawyers, executives, doctors, entrepreneurs, and couples. People who are accomplished, often under significant pressure, and dealing with something they have not been able to resolve on their own.
You will be met with warmth, professionalism, and someone who understands the world you are navigating from the inside. Sessions are direct and active. We get to what is actually driving your experience and address it through weekly sessions or accelerated intensives designed for people who do not have time to waste.
The Practice
This is a private, cash-pay practice. I do not work with insurance because I prioritize your privacy and a level of personalized attention that the standard model does not allow.
I am an active, direct presence in the room. I will notice things and say them. I will challenge what needs to be challenged. And I will take your time seriously, because I understand what it costs you to be here.
The goal is a steadiness in yourself and your relationships that does not depend on everything going well.
- B.A. (Summa Cum Laude), University of Michigan
- J.D., University of Michigan Law School
- M.A. Marriage and Family Therapy, Pepperdine Graduate School of Education and Psychology
- Ph.D. Candidate, Clinical Sexology — intimacy, communication, and sexual health
- Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist #148775
- Member, California and New York Bar Associations
- Relational Life Therapy (RLT)
- Gottman Method Couples Therapy
- Intensive Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Accelerated Resolution Therapy (EFT)
- Basic and Advanced Mediation and Dispute Resolution
The Hermosa Beach
Office
Ready to get started? Reach out directly or explore the FAQ for more information about the practice.
A 15-minute walk to the beach and downtown Hermosa. Adjacent parking available at the office.
Located in Hermosa Beach
Evening and weekend availability for in-person and virtual sessions statewide.
Telehealth available throughout California