Telehealth Therapy in Michigan: How It Works and What It Costs

When I started practising, therapy meant a waiting room, a drive, and an hour carved out of the middle of a workday. Today most of my clients meet me by secure video from a spare bedroom, a parked car, or a kitchen table after the children are asleep. The work is the same. The logistics are not, and the logistics are what people ask about first.

What a telehealth session is

A telehealth session is an ordinary counseling session held over an encrypted video link instead of in a room. It is the same 60 minutes, the same clinical work, the same confidentiality. You receive a link before the session, open it on a phone, tablet, or computer, and we begin. There is no software to install and nothing is recorded.

Research over the last decade has consistently found video therapy as effective as in-person therapy for most concerns adults bring to counseling, including anxiety, grief, and trauma. What matters is the quality of the relationship and the consistency of the work, and both travel well over video.

Who it suits, and who it does not

Telehealth suits people who live outside Oakland County, who have a full calendar, who find leaving the house hard in a difficult season, or who simply prefer to do this work in their own space. It suits anxiety work particularly well, because you practise the tools in the environment where the anxiety actually shows up.

It suits less well when you have no private place to talk, when a household member could overhear, or when your internet drops constantly. In those cases in-person sessions in Lake Orion are the better option, and for some people a mix of the two works best.

Making the session work at your end

• A room with a door, or a parked car, so you can speak freely.
• Headphones, which keep my side of the conversation private and make you feel less exposed.
• The camera at roughly eye level; a laptop on a stack of books is fine.
• Ten quiet minutes afterwards before you step back into the household or the workday. Trauma and grief sessions especially need a landing.

What Michigan law requires

I am licensed as a professional counselor in Michigan, which means I can see clients who are physically in Michigan at the time of the session. If you travel out of state for work or the winter, we plan sessions around that. Telehealth counseling in Michigan also requires your informed consent to the format, which is why the site has a separate telehealth consent page you will see before we begin.

What it costs

Telehealth sessions cost the same as in-person sessions. The practice is self-pay: you are not billed through an insurance plan, which keeps the clinical work free of the diagnosis and session-limit requirements insurers attach. If your plan includes out-of-network mental health benefits, you can submit a superbill for partial reimbursement. The current fee, the deposit, and the three questions to ask your insurer are on the fees page.

How to start

Send a short message through the contact form with the days that work for you and whether you would prefer video or in person. I reply personally within one business day, we confirm a time on Tuesday or Thursday, and the first session is an introduction rather than a deep dive. If after that conversation it does not feel like the right fit, you are under no obligation to continue.