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REGINA ABAYEV, JD, LMFT

Online therapy
across California

Therapy that fits your life

I offer individual and couples therapy throughout California by secure video, allowing clients to continue meaningful therapeutic work when distance, work, travel, parenting, or other demands make regular visits to the office difficult. Every service I offer in my Hermosa Beach office is available virtually, including individual therapy, couples therapy, work around intimacy and sexuality, betrayal, discernment, high-conflict relationships, co-parenting, and extended sessions.

For some clients, the ability to meet from home or work simply makes therapy easier to sustain. For others, particularly couples who live in different cities or parents who maintain separate households, online therapy creates a practical way to be in the same therapeutic conversation despite living in different places. Clients who live farther from Hermosa Beach may also choose to combine formats, coming into the office for longer sessions while meeting online between visits.

Let’s Begin
Regina Abayev at her desk during a virtual therapy session

Online Therapy and
the Therapeutic Relationship

The quality of therapy depends on the quality of the work taking place between therapist and client, and research supports video therapy as an effective format for a range of concerns, including couples therapy. A 2022 randomized trial comparing couples therapy delivered by video with the same treatment delivered in person found no significant differences in relationship satisfaction, symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, or the therapeutic relationship, with gains maintained at three-month follow-up (Kysely et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2022).

There are meaningful differences in what I can observe through a screen. In the office, I have access to the physical space and to more of the nonverbal interaction between people, while online sessions require me to pay close attention to what can be seen and heard through the camera, including tone, expression, pauses, shifts in engagement, and the way partners respond to one another. With couples, I can also work with each person from their own environment when circumstances require them to be in separate locations.

For the work to be useful, the setting needs to support concentration, privacy, and candor. When those conditions are in place, online therapy can accommodate a remarkably wide range of clinical work.

Online Services

What We Work On
Online

Let’s Begin
Couples Therapy
Couples bring the relationship into the room, including the ways they communicate, respond to one another, handle conflict, seek closeness, protect themselves, and attempt to repair what has been damaged. I work to understand what is happening beneath the immediate disagreement and what keeps the two of you from resolving it, rather than spending the session simply deciding who is right.
Communication and Conflict
Repeated arguments tend to develop their own momentum, with each person's response shaping the other's until the original subject of the disagreement becomes almost secondary to what is happening between them. Therapy provides a place to slow that process down, understand what each person is responding to, and develop a different way of engaging when the conversation becomes difficult.
Emotional Intimacy
Emotional intimacy involves knowing what is happening within yourself well enough to share it, remaining interested in your partner's experience, and continuing to make room for each other as both of you change. Therapy can help couples understand what has created distance and develop a greater capacity for openness, curiosity, and connection.
Physical Intimacy and Desire
Sexual desire is influenced by psychological, relational, and physical factors, and changes in sexuality can carry meanings that extend well beyond the sexual relationship itself. Therapy provides an opportunity to talk openly about desire, attraction, resentment, pressure, physical changes, sexual communication, and the circumstances that make intimacy easier or more difficult.
Trust and Repair After Betrayal
Betrayal can disrupt a relationship's sense of security and leave both partners trying to understand what happened, what it means, and whether trust can be rebuilt. Therapy may involve disclosure, accountability, grief, anger, questions about the future, and the difficult process of determining what lasting repair would require from each person.
Discernment Counseling
When partners are considering whether to remain in their relationship and have reached different conclusions about what should happen next, discernment counseling creates a structured opportunity to understand each person's position and the factors that have brought the relationship to this point. The format includes individual time with each partner within the same session and can be conducted entirely online.
Premarital Counseling
Preparing for marriage involves more than discussing logistics. Couples bring family histories, expectations about money and responsibility, ideas about intimacy and parenting, ways of handling conflict, and assumptions about what partnership should look like. Premarital counseling provides an opportunity to examine those areas with enough depth that important conversations are not deferred until they become problems.
When conflict has become highly escalated, conversations can become organized around defending, pursuing, withdrawing, or trying to gain control rather than understanding what either person is trying to communicate. Therapy provides structure around those interactions while creating space to examine the underlying grievances, vulnerabilities, and responsibilities that continue to drive the conflict.
Co-Parenting
Co-parenting requires ongoing communication and decision-making even when the relationship between the parents has ended or changed significantly. Therapy can help parents work through disagreements about boundaries, communication, schedules, responsibilities, and decisions affecting their children while maintaining focus on the relationship they still need to have as parents.
Life Transitions
Major changes can alter the structure of a person's life and place new demands on a relationship, whether the transition involves a new child, divorce, relocation, career change, aging parents, illness, or the development of a blended family. Therapy can provide a place to understand what the transition is requiring from you and how you want to respond to it.
Money and Financial Conflict
Financial disagreements frequently involve questions that extend beyond the numbers themselves, including trust, autonomy, responsibility, security, power, and differing ideas about what a shared life should look like. Online sessions can accommodate the practical side of this work particularly well, since clients can bring financial documents, budgets, compensation information, or other relevant material into the conversation when needed.
Individual Therapy
Individual therapy provides space to examine problems that may be difficult to resolve through determination or problem-solving alone, including anxiety, burnout, relationship difficulties, unhealthy coping, major decisions, professional pressures, and periods of significant change. My work is psychodynamic and depth-focused, while remaining active and direct, with attention to both understanding what is happening and determining what needs to change.
Intensives
Extended sessions are available online for couples who want concentrated time to work through a difficult issue or who have circumstances that make a traditional weekly schedule difficult to maintain. Ninety-minute, half-day, and full-day formats are available, with scheduled breaks during longer sessions.

Creating the Right
Environment for Online Therapy

Privacy is essential to meaningful therapy, particularly when the subject matter involves a relationship, sexuality, family conflict, or experiences that you would not discuss comfortably with someone in the next room. A private room with a closed door is ideal, although a private office, hotel room, or another location where you can speak freely can also work.

If you do not have a suitable space at home, a parked car can provide another option, provided that you are stationary for the entire session. I do not conduct therapy sessions while someone is driving.

For couples joining from different locations, each partner can connect separately, which can be particularly useful when you live in different homes or cities. A stable internet connection, a device with a camera and microphone, and a private place to talk are generally all that is required.

Online therapy can also provide continuity when your circumstances change. If work takes you away from home, you travel within California, you share custody of your children, or one partner is temporarily living elsewhere, therapy can continue without requiring the work to be interrupted and restarted each time your schedule changes.

Practical Details

Schedule Here
01
Private pay
Sessions are private pay, with current rates listed in the Fees section of the FAQ.
02
Telehealth platform
A secure telehealth link is sent before each session. Sessions can be joined through a computer browser or through the Telehealth by SimplePractice application on a phone or tablet.
03
Where you can be located
I am licensed in California and can provide therapy when you are physically located in California at the time of your session. If you plan to travel outside California, please let me know in advance so I can determine whether I am permitted to provide services while you are in that state.
04
Combining online and in-person sessions
Clients who live within driving distance of Hermosa Beach may combine virtual sessions with appointments in the office, including longer sessions when additional time would be useful.
05
Hermosa Beach office
My office is located at 2309 Pacific Coast Highway, Suite 202, Hermosa Beach, California.

Begin
Here

If you are considering therapy and online sessions fit more naturally into your life, I invite you to begin with a conversation about what brings you in, what you have already tried, and what you would like to be different.

I work with individuals and couples throughout California, including clients in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Palos Verdes, the South Bay, Los Angeles, and communities throughout the state.

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