ONLINE EMOTION-FOCUSED THERAPY, COVERED BY INSURANCE
Online Emotion-Focused Therapy: Work With Feelings, Not Against Them
Emotion-focused therapy starts from a simple premise: emotions are not the obstacle to change, they are the engine of it. Octave offers online treatment with licensed therapists trained in emotion-focused therapy, matched to you in 1 to 3 days, with most members paying $28 or less per session with insurance.
1,200+
Therapists
In-network
with major carriers
3,400+
Licensed Therapists
$28
Typical Out-Of-Pocket Per Session, In Network
1 to 8
Days To A First Appointment
Insurance
We Work With Major Carriers
Clients only pay $28 per session, on average. How is this possible? Octave works with you and your insurance provider to secure the best coverage for therapy and make high-quality care accessible.Did you know?
Got an HSA or FSA? You can also use your pre-tax funds to pay for therapy.
Insurance Coverage
Save time and money
Know the cost of therapy before you start. Discover how much your insurance will cover for therapy with Octave. Simply select your state and insurance provider to see any out-of-pocket costs.
How it works
4 steps to start therapy
Step 01
Answer a few questions
Tell us a little about yourself and what you're looking for. You'll get an idea of your cost (if any) after answering.
Step 02
Find the right therapist
Browse licensed Octave therapists or work 1:1 with our team to find a match for your needs and schedule.
Step 03
Start therapy
Schedule your sessions and build a care plan with your therapist that measures progress.
Step 04
See results
Care is grounded in measurable outcomes, with tailored techniques to support real improvement in anxiety, depression, and other concerns.
Get seen by an Octave therapist within 1-8 days.
Provider credentialing section
Less than 4% of therapists who apply join the Octave network.
Every clinician is independently licensed, masters- or doctorate-trained, and reviewed for clinical fit before they see a single client.
3,400+
Therapists in network
Independently licensed across all 50 states
100%
License verified
Active state licensure confirmed quarterly with the issuing board
3.8%
Acceptance rate
Clinicians pass a multi-stage interview, case review, and reference check
10 yrs
Average experience
Median post-licensure clinical practice in the network
Outcomes and clinical evidence
A clearer alternative to the typical referral grind.
94%
report meaningful improvement within 12 sessions
Octave outcomes report, 2024 (n=18,400)
71%
show clinical reduction in PHQ-9 depression scores
Octave outcomes report, 2024 (n=18,400)
82%
remain in care at 6 months — well above industry average
Octave outcomes report, 2024 (n=18,400)
Published research
Meta-analysis
Andersson, G., et al. (2019).
Internet-delivered psychological treatments: from innovation to implementation.
World Psychiatry, 18(1), 20–28.
RCT
Hofmann, S. G., Asnaani, A., Vonk, I. J. J., Sawyer, A. T., & Fang, A. (2012).
The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses.
Cognitive Therapy and Research, 36(5), 427–440.
Outcomes
Lambert, M. J. (2017).
Maximizing psychotherapy outcome beyond evidence-based medicine.
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 86(2), 80–89.
Comprehensive Review
Smith, J., et al. (2021).
Digital mental health interventions: bridging the gap between research and practice.
In our clients’ own words
Our success is measured by the satisfaction of the clients we serve. See what some of them have to say about their experience.
Your unique path
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
After their first therapist session, 9 in 10 Octave clients say that their therapy experience has been good or better.
Octave Patient
Frequently Asked Questions
Online Grief Counseling, Answered
Understanding a pattern doesn't always change it. Here's what emotion-focused therapy is, what it treats, and how it differs from CBT and EFT tapping.
Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) is an evidence-based, experiential therapy built on the finding that lasting change happens through emotion, not just insight about it. Rather than managing feelings from a distance, you learn to access what you actually feel, understand what the emotion is telling you, and transform the stuck, painful responses into something that serves you. It is a warm, active approach with a strong research base for depression, relationship distress, and unresolved grief.
No. Emotion-focused therapy is a talk therapy developed through decades of psychotherapy research; EFT tapping (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is an unrelated practice involving tapping on acupressure points. They share initials and nothing else. This page describes emotion-focused therapy, the evidence-based psychotherapy.
Emotion-focused therapy has strong evidence for depression, couples and relationship distress, and complicated or unresolved grief. It also fits people who feel cut off from their emotions, flooded by them, or stuck repeating reactions they can see but cannot change. If you can explain your patterns perfectly and they persist anyway, that gap is what this approach targets.
CBT works top-down: change the thinking, and the feeling follows. Emotion-focused therapy works bottom-up: access the feeling, and it reorganizes the thinking. Neither is universally better; many people who found CBT useful but incomplete find the missing piece here, and many therapists blend both.
Yes. The work happens in the live conversation between you and your therapist, which video carries fully, and being in your own space often makes emotional depth easier to reach, not harder.
Yes, in most cases. Most Octave members pay $28 or less per session using in-network insurance, confirmed upfront with the cost estimator. Emotion-focused therapy runs as standard weekly sessions, with nothing extra to account for.
More On Online Emotion-Focused Therapy
How Emotion-Focused Therapy Works
Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) works on the level where change actually sticks. Most people arrive in therapy already knowing their patterns; what they cannot do is feel differently inside them. EFT closes that gap by treating emotions as information and as the mechanism of change: you learn to reach the feeling under the feeling, hear what it needs, and let a stuck emotional response transform into one that fits your life now. The approach was developed through decades of research on what actually produces change in therapy sessions.
What emotion-focused therapy sessions look like
Sessions are active and experiential rather than analytical:
Your therapist helps you slow down and stay with what you feel as it happens, instead of narrating it from a distance.
Structured experiential work, like speaking to an empty chair as a person or a part of yourself, brings the live emotion into the room where it can move.
Together you distinguish emotions that point to real needs from the learned, stuck reactions that cover them.
It sounds unusual on paper and feels natural in practice, and it is the part clients most often name as the moment things shifted.
The conditions emotion-focused therapy treats
Emotion-focused therapy has its strongest evidence for depression, distressed couples, and unresolved grief, and it serves anyone whose feelings are either out of reach or overwhelming. For couples, EFT’s relational form works on the attachment cycle underneath recurring fights. The common thread is emotion that stopped moving; the therapy gets it moving again.
Who emotion-focused therapy fits best
This approach fits people who intellectualize brilliantly and feel stuck anyway, people carrying old grief or self-criticism that logic does not touch, and couples having the same fight in different costumes. If you want structured skills and homework first, CBT or DBT may fit better. Tell your Care Navigator how you like to work, and they will match you with a therapist in 1 to 3 days.
If you need help right now
Crisis resources.
Octave is not an emergency service. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
24/7, free, confidential — call or text
Crisis Text Line
Text HOME — 24/7 trained counselors
National DV Hotline
24/7 confidential support
Veterans Crisis Line
Press 1 after dialing 988
SAMHSA National Helpline
Treatment referral & info, 24/7
Trevor Project
LGBTQ+ youth crisis support
You don’t have to carry this alone.
Online grief counseling with a matched therapist, covered by most major insurance plans, from home.
Find Your Best Therapist