Therapy focused on what matters to you
Five Towns Psychology is a fully virtual psychology practice specializing in anxiety, OCD, depression, trauma, and emotion regulation for children ages 8 and up, adolescents, and adults in New York and Florida.
We believe effective therapy starts with understanding not only what is difficult, but what is important to you. Your values, priorities, and goals help guide the direction of treatment. Our role isn't to tell you what your life should look like. It's to help you develop the insight, skills, and confidence to move toward the life you want to build.
Our approach is collaborative, practical, and grounded in evidence-based treatments, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Behavioral Activation (BA), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and skills from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
And because therapy needs to work in the context of real life, our practice is entirely virtual—giving you greater flexibility to make therapy part of your schedule.
Personalized Care
Treatment tailored to your unique needs.
Evidence-Based
Therapies grounded in research and results.
Compassionate Support
A safe, supportive space to heal and grow.
Rooted in Our Community
Proudly serving the Five Towns and surrounding communities.
Our Philosophy
Your goals. Your values. Your therapy.
There is no single definition of a meaningful life—and therapy shouldn't impose one.
You may want to feel less controlled by anxiety. Reconnect with people and activities that matter to you. Stop spending hours trying to get certainty from OCD. Work through the impact of a traumatic experience. Navigate relationships more effectively. Or simply understand yourself better and figure out what you want next.
Whatever brings you to therapy, we start by understanding what matters to you.
Evidence-based treatments provide a roadmap, but therapy remains collaborative. Together, we identify where you want to go, understand what's getting in the way, and use strategies supported by research to help you move toward your goals.
How We Can Help
Our Areas of Specialty
Anxiety
Anxiety has a way of making your world smaller.
It can show up as excessive worry, perfectionism, reassurance seeking, avoidance, overthinking decisions, difficulty tolerating uncertainty, or getting caught in endless "what if?" questions. You may find yourself spending so much time trying to prevent something from going wrong—or making sure you've made the "right" choice—that anxiety begins to dictate what you do and don't do.
Therapy focuses not simply on making anxiety disappear, but on changing the patterns that keep it going. We work to help you build greater tolerance for uncertainty and discomfort so that anxiety has less say in your decisions—and you have more freedom to pursue what actually matters to you.
Learn About Anxiety TreatmentOCD & ERP
OCD can involve intrusive thoughts, images, doubts, or urges along with behaviors or mental rituals intended to reduce anxiety or create certainty.
Compulsions aren't always obvious. Reassurance seeking, mentally reviewing events, researching, confessing, avoiding triggers, checking how you feel, and repeatedly trying to "figure something out" can all become part of the OCD cycle.
Five Towns Psychology offers Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), an evidence-based treatment for OCD. ERP helps clients gradually approach feared thoughts, situations, and uncertainty while reducing the compulsive responses that keep OCD going.
The goal isn't to convince you that your fears will never happen or help you achieve perfect certainty. It's to help you become more willing to experience uncertainty without allowing OCD to dictate your choices—creating more room for the things you actually want your life to be about.
Learn About OCD & ERPDepression & Behavioral Activation
Depression can make it difficult to stay connected to the parts of life that once felt meaningful.
Motivation may disappear. You may withdraw from people, put off responsibilities, stop doing things you enjoy, or find yourself waiting to feel better before reengaging with your life. Unfortunately, that cycle can leave you feeling even more disconnected and stuck.
One of the primary approaches we use for depression is Behavioral Activation (BA). Rather than waiting for motivation to return before taking action, Behavioral Activation helps clients gradually reconnect with activities, relationships, responsibilities, and experiences that provide a sense of meaning, accomplishment, or enjoyment.
Importantly, those activities aren't chosen according to what someone else thinks you should be doing. We work together to identify what matters to you and develop realistic steps toward bringing more of it back into your life.
Learn About Depression TreatmentTrauma & CPT
Trauma can continue to shape the way you think, feel, and respond long after the experience itself has ended.
You may find yourself feeling constantly on alert, avoiding reminders of what happened, struggling with guilt or self-blame, feeling disconnected from others, or noticing that the experience changed the way you think about yourself, other people, or the world.
Five Towns Psychology offers Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), an evidence-based treatment for PTSD and trauma-related symptoms.
After trauma, people can become stuck in beliefs such as I should have known, I could have prevented it, I can't trust anyone, or I'm not safe anymore. CPT refers to these as "stuck points." Treatment helps you identify and examine these beliefs so that you can develop a fuller, more balanced understanding of what happened and what it means for your life now.
The goal isn't to forget what happened or have someone tell you how you are supposed to feel about it. It's to help the trauma take up less space so that you have greater freedom to decide what comes next.
Learn About Trauma & CPTEmotion Regulation & DBT-Informed Therapy
Some people experience emotions quickly, deeply, and intensely.
When emotions become overwhelming, it can be difficult to know how to respond without acting impulsively, shutting down, avoiding, or getting caught in recurring conflict. You may understand afterward what you wish you had done differently but find it difficult to access that perspective in the moment.
Our work incorporates skills from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to help clients better understand their emotions, tolerate distress, stay present, communicate more effectively, and respond more intentionally.
The goal isn't to stop feeling deeply or decide which emotions you "should" have. It's to develop more choice in what you do with those feelings—and to respond in ways that are more consistent with the person you want to be.
Learn About Emotion RegulationWho We Work With
Therapy Across the Lifespan
Children
Children don't always have the words to explain what they're experiencing.
Therapy helps children put language around their thoughts and emotions, understand the patterns that may be keeping them stuck, and develop skills they can use in their everyday lives.
With anxiety, for example, children can learn how avoidance and reassurance may provide relief in the moment while making anxiety stronger over time. Treatment helps them gradually build confidence in their ability to handle uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and uncertainty.
Sessions are adapted to the child's age and may incorporate conversation, games, videos, activities, and real-life practice. Parents are incorporated into treatment when their involvement can help reinforce progress outside of sessions.
The goal isn't to create a child who never feels anxious or upset. It's to help children build confidence that they can handle difficult emotions while continuing to participate in the experiences that are important to them.
Adolescents
Adolescence brings growing independence alongside academic pressure, changing friendships, family dynamics, relationships, and increasingly complicated emotions.
Therapy gives adolescents a space that is their own while helping them develop concrete skills for managing anxiety, OCD, depression, intense emotions, relationships, and stress.
Adolescents are also beginning to develop their own identities, priorities, and values. Therapy provides a place to explore those questions without prescribing what the answers should be.
Adults
You may know exactly what you want to change—or you may simply recognize that something isn't working.
You might find yourself overthinking decisions, seeking reassurance, avoiding things that make you anxious, getting stuck in intrusive thoughts, withdrawing from things you once enjoyed, carrying the effects of a traumatic experience, struggling in relationships, or reacting more intensely than you would like.
Therapy provides an opportunity to slow those patterns down, understand what is driving them, and begin practicing something different.
The direction of that change is guided by you: What matters to you? What kind of relationships do you want? How do you want to spend your time? What do you want your life to stand for?
Our role is to help you get closer to those answers—and translate them into meaningful change outside of therapy.
Our Approach
Evidence-based. Collaborative. Values-driven.
Good therapy isn't simply about reducing symptoms. It's about helping those symptoms interfere less with the life you actually want to live. At Five Towns Psychology, treatment brings together three things:
What the research tells us. We use evidence-based approaches and structured treatment protocols when appropriate.
What our clinical experience tells us. Treatment is adapted to the individual rather than applied mechanically.
What you tell us. Your goals, values, preferences, experiences, and priorities matter. We may challenge you, encourage you to approach things you've been avoiding, or help you look at a situation from another perspective—but the purpose is always to help you move toward your goals, not ours.
Therapy is something we do with you, not to you.
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Why Telehealth?
Therapy that works with your life.
Five Towns Psychology was designed as a fully virtual practice serving clients in New York and Florida.
Telehealth allows children, adolescents, and adults to participate in therapy from a familiar, private space without the additional time involved in commuting and waiting rooms. It can make appointments easier to integrate around work, school, parenting, extracurricular activities, and other responsibilities.
For many clients and families, that flexibility makes it easier to make therapy a consistent part of life rather than one more logistical challenge.
Therapy your way, on your time.
Meet the Founder
Dr. Avital Soep
Licensed Clinical Psychologist providing virtual therapy for children, adolescents, and adults in New York and Florida. Her approach is warm, collaborative, and practical—helping clients build insight, resilience, and meaningful tools for lasting change.
Learn More About Dr. SoepReady to get started?
We strive to make beginning therapy feel simple, supportive, and approachable.