Individual Therapy for Executives | Regina Abayev, LMFT

Individual Therapy

Therapy for people who expect a lot of themselves

I work with thoughtful, driven people who want more depth, agency, and freedom in their lives and relationships. Some come to therapy with a problem they can name; others recognize that something in the way they are living, relating, deciding, or coping needs attention. Some of what brings people here is private enough that they have said very little about it, even to the people closest to them.

My work is direct, depth-oriented, and focused on change. We look at the history behind a pattern, the purpose it may have served, what keeps it going, and whether it still works for you, and then use that understanding to do something differently.

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Depth, insight,
and change

My approach combines psychodynamic and relational therapy with practical, solutions-focused work. Understanding why you feel, react, and relate as you do can reveal connections that have been difficult to recognize and give context to choices or behaviors that otherwise make little sense. Insight becomes especially valuable when it changes what you are able to do.

I listen closely, ask challenging questions, reflect and share what I see, and pay attention to resistance, avoidance, contradictions, and the places where change becomes harder than expected. Therapy may involve recognizing your contribution to a painful relationship, staying with an emotion you would prefer to resolve quickly, asking directly for what you need, reconsidering a behavior that provides temporary relief, or accepting that a choice carries consequences you cannot reason away.

Compassion and accountability belong in the same room. Understanding how a behavior developed does not require continuing it, and taking responsibility for your choices does not require condemning yourself for having made them. The aim is to know yourself well enough to have more choice about what you do next.

Before I Became
a Therapist

Before becoming a therapist, I spent nineteen years working in law, investment banking, structured finance, and technology. I practiced as an attorney, worked as an investment banker, served as general counsel and head of product at growing companies, and eventually co-founded and helped build a company through its sale to private equity. I understand the demands of working in environments where the expectations are high, the hours can be long, and decisions have consequences for employees, investors, clients, and families.

That background is useful with many of the people I see because work is rarely just a source of stress. It can be intellectually engaging, competitive, financially rewarding, closely connected to identity, and a source of enormous satisfaction. It can also consume more of your time and attention than you intended, complicate relationships, or make it difficult to know whether you are still pursuing something you want or simply continuing at a pace you have maintained for years.

I understand much of the professional context already, which leaves us more time to understand you.

What we
work on

01
Relationships, Marriage, and Family
Close relationships ask something different of us than competence in other areas of life. They require the ability to ask for what we need, tolerate another person’s disappointment, remain receptive during conflict, hear criticism without immediately defending against it, express anger without becoming destructive, and allow another person to matter without surrendering ourselves in the process.
Individual therapy offers a close view of how you participate in these relationships: how you communicate, respond to hurt, protect yourself, manage closeness, interpret another person’s behavior, and repair after conflict. I will reflect what I see, including your contribution to a painful dynamic, while preserving the complexity of a relationship in which two people can experience the same interaction very differently.
The point is to develop more choice in how you relate, particularly in the moments when familiar reactions would otherwise take over.
02
Anxiety, Perfectionism, and Internal Pressure
High standards can produce exceptional work while generating considerable internal pressure. Anxiety and perfectionism may appear as overthinking, excessive preparation, procrastination, difficulty delegating, irritability, indecision, intolerance of mistakes, or an inability to experience completion before attention has already shifted to what comes next.
The useful question is not whether your standards are objectively too high, but how much freedom you have in relation to them. A standard you consciously choose has a different psychological effect from one you feel compelled to satisfy regardless of its cost.
Therapy can clarify what drives the pressure, which expectations genuinely deserve your effort, where anxiety has begun influencing your decisions, and how to preserve the ambition or discipline you value without allowing internal pressure to dictate the terms.
03
Decisions Analysis Cannot Settle
Some decisions remain unresolved after the facts have been gathered, the alternatives modeled, and the consequences considered. Staying in a marriage, leaving a career, selling a company, taking a financial risk, confronting someone you love, ending a relationship, or changing a life you worked hard to build can involve competing loyalties, desires, responsibilities, fears, and losses.
More analysis cannot necessarily resolve a conflict that involves emotion, identity, or competing values. There may be no option that preserves everything you care about, and certainty may not arrive before a decision has to be made.
Therapy can separate what can be reasoned through from the fear, guilt, grief, loyalty, desire, and obligation that also influence the choice. Clarity comes from knowing what is pulling you in each direction well enough to trust your own judgment, make the decision, and take responsibility for what follows.
04
When Thinking Keeps Feelings at a Distance
Intellectual understanding and emotional understanding are different capacities. You can explain a pattern accurately, trace its history, recognize it while it is happening, and remain remarkably unchanged by everything you know about it.
Intellectualization is one way the mind keeps emotionally charged material manageable. Analysis creates distance, and for people whose intelligence has served them particularly well, that distance can be difficult to recognize because thinking itself feels productive.
At those points, therapy becomes more experiential. We slow the process enough to notice what is happening beneath the explanation: a feeling that disappears almost as quickly as it appears, an impulse to solve rather than experience, a physical response that precedes conscious thought, or an emotion that becomes easier to discuss once it has been converted into an idea. Learning to remain connected to emotional experience allows it to become useful information rather than something to manage from a distance.
05
Drinking, Overworking, and Other Ways of Coping
Alcohol, drugs, overworking, spending, and other compulsive behaviors can provide temporary relief from anxiety, pressure, loneliness, anger, shame, boredom, or emotional pain. That relief helps explain why a behavior can remain compelling even after its consequences begin affecting relationships, health, finances, work, or a sense of control.
Shame tells us very little about why a behavior persists. Its function tells us considerably more. We pay attention to what precedes it, what changes while you are engaged in it, what follows afterward, and what you would have to feel or tolerate if the behavior were no longer available in the same way.
Change requires honesty about both sides of the equation: what the behavior costs and what it provides. Substance use or compulsive behavior that has developed into addiction requires direct attention, and we address it accordingly.
06
Ambition, Achievement, and Identity
Ambition can be pleasurable, creative, competitive, financially rewarding, intellectually engaging, and deeply connected to a sense of purpose. There is no therapeutic virtue in wanting less simply because someone else believes your life would be more balanced if you did.
Achievement can also become intertwined with identity, security, status, self-worth, responsibility, family expectations, or ideas about what constitutes enough, making it harder to distinguish what you genuinely want from what you have become accustomed to pursuing.
The questions become more personal: what do you want from your work, what are you willing to give it, what are you unwilling to sacrifice for it, and how do you want to respond when ambition competes with other parts of your life that you also value? The purpose is not to make ambition smaller, but to make your relationship with it more conscious and deliberate.
07
Trauma, Relational Loss, and Experiences That Continue to Affect You
A breakup, betrayal, death, financial loss, bankruptcy, frightening event, professional failure, or earlier experience can continue to influence emotion, relationships, decision-making, and confidence long after the event itself has ended. Intrusive memories, avoidance, anxiety, shame, fear, or diminished trust in your own judgment can allow the past to remain active in choices being made in the present.
My work is depth-oriented, and I also use Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) when a particular memory or experience continues to carry significant emotional or physical intensity. ART allows us to work directly with distressing images, sensations, and memories, while psychotherapy addresses the meaning of the experience, the loss surrounding it, and the ways it has affected your understanding of yourself and other people.
The aim is to integrate what happened without allowing it to continue determining what happens next.

Working
Together

50-Minute Individual Sessions

Individual therapy is generally scheduled weekly, with more frequent or extended sessions available when additional time would be useful.

In Person or Online Across California

I see clients at my office in Hermosa Beach and through secure telehealth while they are physically located in California. Some clients alternate between the two depending on their schedules.

Private Pay

My practice is private pay and I do not work directly with insurance. Current fees and practice policies are available on the FAQ page.

Getting Started

We begin with a consultation to discuss what you are looking for, answer questions about my approach, and determine whether working together makes sense.

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Frequently Asked
Questions

Do I need to know exactly what I want to work on?

No. You may have a specific concern, several areas of your life that seem connected, or a sense that something needs attention without yet knowing how to define it. Therapy can begin before you have a complete explanation for what is happening.

How frequently will we meet?

Individual therapy is generally weekly. Frequency can change depending on what you are addressing, the amount of support appropriate at a particular point, and whether a period of more concentrated work would be useful.

Do you work with alcohol, substance use, and compulsive behavior?

Yes. I work with clients concerned about alcohol, drugs, overworking, spending, and other behaviors that have become hard to control or are producing consequences they no longer want. We address the behavior directly while also attending to the emotional or psychological function it has been serving. If a higher level of care or additional support becomes appropriate, I will discuss that with you directly.

Can I meet with you both online and in person?

Yes. Sessions are available in person in Hermosa Beach and through secure telehealth while you are physically located in California. Some clients use both formats depending on travel, work, family responsibilities, or preference.

What is your style as a therapist?

I am active, direct, and engaged. I listen closely and leave room for reflection, while also asking questions, offering interpretations, identifying contradictions, and sharing what I see. I am interested in depth, but I do not believe insight should become an end in itself; therapy should help you develop a different relationship with yourself, make choices with more agency, and change what you genuinely want to change.

Individual Therapy in Hermosa Beach
and Across California

I work with adults in person in Hermosa Beach, serving Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Palos Verdes, the South Bay, and greater Los Angeles, as well as through telehealth throughout California.

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Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, California #148775. J.D., University of Michigan Law School. M.A. in Marriage and Family Therapy, Pepperdine University. Doctoral training in clinical sexology. Advanced training in Accelerated Resolution Therapy, Relational Life Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and the Gottman Method.

Further reading

Hard Worker or Workaholic? The Line and the Fallout

Ambition, compulsive work, and the point at which achievement begins creating consequences elsewhere in your life.

People-Pleasing Is a Learned Relational Strategy

How accommodation can become a way of managing relationships and why changing it can involve more than simply learning to say no.

Shame and High Achievement: Performance-Based Worth

The relationship between achievement, self-worth, and the pressure to continue proving yourself.

Intellectualization: The Defense of All Defenses

How intellectual understanding can provide insight while also creating distance from emotional experience.