Online Individual Therapy in Tokyo.

The work

The work I do is relational and pattern-focused. I don't run through intake checklists or assign exercises between sessions. I pay attention to what happens in the room: what you're saying, what you're not saying, the moments when something shifts or goes flat or speeds up. That's the material we work with.

Most people arrive already knowing the story of their situation. They've told it to themselves a hundred times and always land in the same place. What's missing is a different angle, someone watching in real time who can name what's invisible from inside it. That's what I offer. Not interpretation from a distance, but attention in the room, offered as it happens.

I work with individuals and couples. Individual work is usually about finding the pattern underneath the presenting problem, the thing that keeps recurring in different forms across different circumstances. Couples work is about finding what the argument is really about, which is rarely what it appears to be about. Both come down to the same thing: seeing what you haven't been able to see, and from there, actually being able to do something different.

Why English depth therapy is scarce here

Two things make Tokyo hard. English-language therapists who do open-ended depth work are genuinely few, so the foreign professional searching for one is choosing from a tiny pool. And the dominant local model leans medical and brief, medication and short consults, rather than the sustained talk therapy many internationals are looking for. Add real stigma, and a lot of people simply go without. The wider picture is on my Japan page.

Working online with me removes the language problem and the cultural-distance problem in one step, with no Japanese record and no wait.

What Tokyo brings to therapy

Tokyo is safe, polite, frictionless, and for a foreigner almost completely impenetrable, and that combination produces a specific kind of distress. The Western finance contingent, the diplomatic corps, the corporate transferee, the academic, all living inside a society that rewards decades of belonging and offers the outsider a permanent, courteous guest status. The trailing spouse who cannot read the room or the mail and has lost the easy competence she had at home. The marriage that frayed under the relocation, now conducted in a flat where neither person has anyone else. The high-functioning professional who looks entirely fine, performs perfectly, and is quietly dissolving inside a life with no one in it who speaks their first language at any depth. It is loneliness with excellent infrastructure.

The arrangement

I am a US-trained psychodynamic therapist working online and privately: no Japanese license, no local clinic, no diagnosis on any record. You pay directly, in any currency. The time difference is real, so we find a workable window; many Tokyo clients take an early-morning or late-evening slot. When what you need is prescribing, assessment, or in-person psychiatric care, the Japanese system handles that, and I will say so directly.

Questions people ask from Tokyo

What people bring to online therapy

The people I work with in English come for a wide range of reasons: anxiety, depression, stress and burnout, anger management, grief and loss, relationship difficulties, loneliness, self-esteem issues, procrastination, sleep problems, attachment patterns, self-sabotage, perfectionism, identity questions, and existential concerns. Online counseling makes this work possible from wherever you are, whether you need an English-speaking therapist, a virtual counselor, or simply someone who can work in your language at a depth that matters.

How it works

Sessions are online via secure video call. I work with individuals and couples (60 minutes). Before your first session, we have a free 15-minute call to see if this feels like the right fit for you.