Online Therapy For California Residents
During online therapy from Gavin Cross, LMFT, you’ll gain the practical tools and coping skills required to decrease your body’s natural stress response, all from the comfort of your home!
You Know Something Needs to Change
You're tired in a way sleep doesn't fix. You've been short with people you love over nothing, then spent the rest of the day feeling guilty about it. You say "I'm fine" so often it barely registers as a lie anymore. Somewhere underneath the routine of the job, the relationship, the version of yourself everyone else relies on something's been asking for attention for a while now.
Maybe it shows up as a knot in your stomach every Sunday night. Maybe it's the way you've started dreading your phone buzzing, or the argument with your partner that somehow always ends up in the same place no matter how it starts. Maybe you've just noticed you're going through the motions of your own life more than you're actually living it.
You've probably thought about therapy already. Then you thought about your calendar, and let the idea drop.
Who Has Time To Drive Around Town for Therapy?
Here's the honest problem with traditional therapy: it asks you to clock out in the middle of a workday, fight traffic, sit in a waiting room, and drive back for an hour that's supposed to make your life lighter, not add another errand to it. For a lot of people, that's exactly the barrier that keeps a good idea sitting in the "someday" pile for years.
Maybe you've got a partner who watches the kids for exactly one hour and not a minute more. Maybe your job doesn't have a lot of room for "stepping out," let alone stepping out and driving twenty minutes each way. Maybe you're simply someone who runs out of steam by 6pm, and the idea of getting back in the car after a full day feels like the last thing you have in you. None of that makes you less deserving of support. It just means the traditional model was never built with your actual week in mind.
Online therapy skips all of that. No hunting for the right pants to wear to an appointment. No parking, no waiting room, small talk, no lost afternoon. Just you, wherever you happen to be, and me, on the other side of a secure video call.
That's Where Online Therapy Comes In
I offer full-length sessions by secure video, the same depth and structure as sitting across from me in person, just without the drive. You'll get a private link before each appointment; no software downloads, no complicated logins, just click and show up from your couch, your car during a lunch break, or a quiet corner of your apartment with the door closed.
Most clients meet weekly, since consistency is what actually moves therapy forward. It's a lot easier to protect that weekly hour when it doesn't require leaving the house, fighting for parking, or explaining to a coworker why you slipped out early again.
If you've done in-person therapy before and are just switching formats, you won't lose any momentum. If this is your first time in therapy at all, online sessions tend to be a gentler way to start. There's something about being in a familiar space that takes the edge off walking into a stranger's office for the first time.
What Therapy With Gavin Cross, LMFT Actually Feels Like
Talk therapy will feel a lot like a conversation with a trusted friend, one who's actually trained to help you make sense of what's going on. From a safe position of observation, we'll look at what's keeping you stuck: the argument with your partner that keeps repeating itself with different words, the anxiety you've gotten so good at hiding that nobody guesses it's there, the version of yourself you quietly left behind a few years ago.
As you carry what we uncover out of session and into your week, you'll notice more patience with the people you love, more clarity at work, and a little more room to breathe. All without ever needing to leave your house to get there.
You don't need to arrive with the right words already lined up. Some clients start with "I don't even know where to begin," and that's a perfectly fine place to start. My job is to help you find the shape of what's actually going on underneath the surface complaint, whether that's the argument you keep having, the job that's quietly draining you, or the anxiety that's been running in the background so long you've almost stopped noticing it.
Who Therapy With Gavin Cross, LMFT Helps
I built my practice around a simple idea: that people, and men especially, carry pressures they rarely say out loud about work, about relationships, about whether they're actually okay. Online therapy makes that support reachable no matter where in California you happen to live.
In therapy for men, we work on quieting the inner critic, understanding where the anxiety is actually coming from, and building the confidence to show up fully at work and at home, without adding a commute to an already packed week.
For couples, video sessions solve a real logistical problem: getting two schedules to the same place at the same time. You can both join from home right after work, or on a lunch break, still doing the real work of rebuilding communication and reconnecting, minus the coordination headache.
For LGBTQ+ clients, especially those outside major cities where affirming, experienced therapists can be harder to find nearby, online therapy opens a door to care that might not exist in your immediate area.
For clients working through trauma, EMDR therapy does the same reprocessing work online as it does in person, so you can access a highly specialized approach without needing a therapist located nearby.With online therapy, you get the same quality of care from wherever you are, without losing an hour of your day to a commute across LA traffic.
In therapy for women, sessions fit into a day already stretched between work, family, and everyone else's needs, giving you a space that's just for you without adding another errand to the list. Women who benefit from our work together are those who feel they’d benefit from a male perspective, or are seeking extra specialization for stress or trauma recovery.
None of this requires you to fit neatly into one category, either. Plenty of clients are dealing with more than one thing at once, a demanding job and a shaky relationship, an old wound and a new source of stress. We'll follow whatever's actually most alive for you that week, rather than sticking rigidly to a single label.
Should You Actually Be In Therapy?
Here's what surprises a lot of people: you don't need a crisis to justify starting. The number one reason clients reach out to me isn't a diagnosis, it's the quieter stuff. Feeling stretched thin. Feeling disconnected from a partner. Replaying the same fight on a loop. Being tired of holding it together for everyone else while nobody asks how you're actually doing.
It might look like scrolling your phone for an hour instead of going to bed, even though you know you'll regret it in the morning. It might be the way you've started rehearsing conversations in your head before they happen, or the flash of irritation that shows up faster than it used to. None of that needs a diagnosis attached to it to be worth talking through.
If any of that sounds familiar, that's reason enough. You don't need to have the problem perfectly labeled before you're allowed to ask for help with it.
If you're in an active crisis or need immediate support, this page isn't the right resource. Please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or go to your nearest emergency room.
Available Wherever You Are In California
Because I'm licensed through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, I can work with you by video anywhere in the state whether you are in Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, Long Beach, Oakland, or anywhere in between. Wherever you are, you don't have to get in a car to start this work.
What We Work On Together
Online sessions cover the same ground I work through in person: anxiety that won't quiet down, relationship conflict and communication breakdowns, especially the specific pressures a lot of men carry around work and identity, and trauma recovery including through EMDR therapy, which adapts well to video using guided visual movement or tapping.
If there's a specific memory, pattern, or feeling that keeps showing up uninvited, online sessions give us a real way to work through it, not just talk around it.
A Bit About Me
I'm Gavin, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #133554). Before any of my clinical training, I spent five years answering calls on a college suicide hotline, which is where I first saw how much relief people feel just from being heard by someone who isn't trying to fix them on the spot. That experience is still the foundation of how I show up in session, whether we're in a room together or on opposite ends of a video call. You can read more about my background and training on my about Gavin Cross, LMFT page.
What Your First Session Will Feel Like
You click the link, your camera turns on, and we start talking with no clipboard, no intake forms to fill out in a waiting room beforehand. I'll ask what's brought you in and what you're hoping feels different on the other side of this work. That's really it. You don't need a polished summary of your problems; you just need to show up as you are that day, mid-week stress and all.
Some people worry the screen will make things feel less real, or less personal. In practice, most clients tell me the opposite happens: being in a space you already feel safe in makes it easier, not harder, to say the true thing out loud.
Privacy That Travels With You
Confidentiality doesn't change because the session happens on a screen. I use an encrypted, HIPAA-compliant platform built specifically for behavioral health, so your sessions are held to the same standard as an in-office visit under California law. On your end, just find a private spot and treat the hour the way you would any appointment that matters.
Getting Started
Getting started is simple: schedule a free consultation, and we'll spend a short call talking about what's bringing you in and whether we seem like a good fit. No pressure, no obligation, a good therapeutic relationship starts with honesty about whether the connection feels right. Session rates and scheduling details are covered during that conversation, and you're welcome to ask anything else on your mind before committing to ongoing sessions.
It’s time to reclaim your life
There’s a big, beautiful world out there. You deserve to experience all it has to offer.
Let’s rediscover your strength.