In short Online therapy in English in Vancouver: weekly individual sessions over secure video, scheduled across time zones. Psychodynamic depth work with a US-trained therapist. You pay directly, so nothing runs through local insurance or health records. Fees and fit are covered in a free 15-minute call.

The work

The work I do is relational and focused on pattern. I don't run intake checklists. I don't assign homework. I pay attention to what happens in the session. The moments when something shifts or goes flat. The pattern that keeps showing up underneath the problem. Most people already know their own story. They still keep landing in the same place. What's missing is someone watching in real time, someone who can name what you cannot see from inside it. More on how I work, and how I work with couples.

Working with me from Vancouver

Since BC therapy is private-pay regardless, the deciding factors are orientation and fit. I offer psychodynamic depth work, scarcer in Vancouver's CBT-and-coaching-heavy market than the listings imply, with a practice built entirely on people living far from where they started. My fee is in line with senior RCC rates. The Pacific time gap is the one real constraint: Vancouver sessions tend to sit in your mid-afternoon, a window West Coast clients often take as a deliberate pause in the workday, and I can schedule across time zones to suit you. For insurance-eligible receipts, formal assessment, or prescribing, a BC-registered psychologist or physician is the right door, and I will be plain about it when we talk.

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.

In shortOnline psychodynamic therapy for Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. Depth work in a market where knowing who trained whom is the whole game.

The Vancouver predicament

Vancouver has a social pattern so well known it has its own nickname: the freeze. A city of polite, outdoorsy, fully booked people that newcomers find nearly impossible to get close to. Add the housing math that shapes every life decision. Add the November-to-March rain the brochures crop out. Add a crowd of people forever half-arriving and half-leaving. You get the standard Vancouver story. Someone moved for the mountains and the ocean. They got both. And they are lonelier than they have ever been while living, by any measure, in paradise. The tech transplants in Yaletown and Mount Pleasant. The families stretched across North Van mortgages. The Asia-Pacific workers running two time zones at once. The Americans who assumed a shared culture meant belonging. The details vary. The undertow does not. Paradise with no one in it is a clinical situation.

Therapy in BC: buyer, beware and be informed

British Columbia is the loosest regulatory environment for talk therapy in Canada. The word counsellor is not a protected title here: anyone may use it, with any training or none. The RCC designation, Registered Clinical Counsellor, is a voluntary credential through the BCACC, a professional association rather than a government college, and it is the de facto quality marker insurers recognize. Psychologist is protected and doctoral-level. Government regulation of counselling has been formally in motion since legislation in 2022 and a joint application by the professional associations in 2023, but as of this writing the new college is still in progress, not in force. Meanwhile MSP covers none of it: private counselling and psychology in BC are out of pocket or through extended health benefits, with RCC sessions typically 130 to 185 dollars and psychologists 200 to 250-plus. The cross-Canada title map, and my own position relative to it, is on my Canada page; in brief, I am US-trained, work online, and sit outside the Canadian registers, exactly as BC's many unregistered local practitioners sit outside them, with the difference that I will tell you so in the first paragraph.

Questions people ask from Vancouver

Is counselling regulated in British Columbia?
Not yet by government. The counsellor title is unprotected in BC; the RCC designation is a voluntary credential through the BCACC, a professional association. A regulatory college has been in development since 2022 legislation but is still in progress. Psychologist remains a protected, doctoral-level title.
Does MSP cover therapy in Vancouver?
No. Private counselling and psychology are not MSP services. People pay out of pocket or through extended health benefits, which usually specify covered credentials (often RCC, RSW, or psychologist) and cap annual amounts.
What does therapy cost in Vancouver?
Typically 130 to 185 dollars a session with an RCC and 200 to 250 or more with a registered psychologist; supervised interns run 40 to 110. My fee is comparable to senior RCC rates, paid directly.

Selected research on this approach

My work is psychodynamic and depth-oriented. These are some of the studies on the effectiveness of that kind of therapy. They describe research on the method in general, and are not claims about any individual outcome.

  • Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98-109. doi:10.1037/a0018378
  • Steinert, C., Munder, T., Rabung, S., Hoyer, J., & Leichsenring, F. (2017). Psychodynamic therapy: as efficacious as other empirically supported treatments? A meta-analysis testing equivalence of outcomes. American Journal of Psychiatry, 174(10), 943-953. PMID 28541091

The full reading list is on the approach page.

Related Reading

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Therapy in English in other countries