The case for in-person:

It’s easy for clinicians to offer therapy sessions through a screen. While convenient and oftentimes important for certain accessibility needs, online therapy can impact the treatment experience in a few meaningful ways:

• Privacy concerns or distraction

  Your partner in the other room, your boss walking past your office, your pet scratching at the door. Not very conducive to personal exploration.

  In-person meetings provide a dedicated private space to show up fully for yourself, rather than worrying about who might be listening or managing whatever is happening on the other side of your door.

• Difficulty transitioning away

  You close the session tab, but the emotional weight doesn’t close with it. Without a commute, walk, or change of scenery, there’s no natural opportunity to transition away from what was discussed before stepping back into work or home life.

  Attending therapy in person allows the office itself to serve as a container; a dedicated space where certain experiences can be opened, felt, and held within the hour. While those experiences don’t disappear when you leave, having a physical place to return to can make it easier to set them aside between sessions. There is something grounding about knowing that space will be there, ready to hold what you bring back to it.

• The screen as a barrier

  For most people, connecting through a screen feels harder than connecting in person. Research consistently shows that the relationship between client and therapist is the biggest predictor of positive treatment outcomes.

  Therapy tends to involve emotionally charged topics, and most people find it easier to with someone they feel genuinely comfortable with. Meeting in-person may enhance the connection you build with your therapist, and the outcomes you experience as a result.

• Technical disruptions

  It’s not a good feeling when you share something vulnerable, right as the telehealth platform froze or disconnected. You may be left hanging for a few minutes as the session reconnects. Or perhaps there was just some lag, and you have to repeat all the details you just shared. It can feel frustrating, even painful, to have a a vulnerable moment interrupted by a frozen screen. . What you have to say matters, and it should not be impacted by the wifi.

A smaller practice

You have likely received advertisements from large therapy platforms promising immediate connection and round-the-clock availability. While this may sound reassuring, the reality clients often encounter looks different. Large caseloads, shortened session times, and clinicians stretched too thin to be fully present.

Clients who have come to me after experiences with these platforms have described feelings like a number: working with clinicians who couldn’t recall the details of their story, who routinely cancelled last minute, or who were visibly distracted during sessions. The promise of accessibility doesn’t always translate to the quality of care that therapeutic work requires.

My practice is built differently. With an intentionally limited caseload size and a schedule designed with a margin, each session begins with my full attention on you.

Curiosity

Many therapists assign homework at the end of a session, and there are certainly times when I do the same. But one of the tools I return to most consistently isn’t a worksheet or an exercise. It’s a question.

A natural sense of curiosity shapes how I listen and what I notice. It leads me to ask things that might not have been considered before. A well-timed question has the ability to stop someone in their tracks, opening up a line of self-inquiry that continues long after the session ends. Even if an answer isn’t immediately available, sitting with the right question allows for longstanding beliefs or patterns to be explored in new ways.