Our Approach

What brings people to Therapy Aligned™

Individual Psychotherapy in New Jersey

Individual therapy in New Jersey, offered through Therapy Aligned, is a space where clients of all ages can bring the full complexity of their lives. Whether you’re navigating a major transition, sitting with a recurring pattern that doesn’t make sense, or simply feeling like something is off and you can’t name it yet, individual psychotherapy offers a consistent, boundaried relationship in which to explore that.

Our clinicians work from relational, depth-oriented, and evidence-based traditions. Approaches include Internal Family Systems (IFS), psychodynamic therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), attachment-based therapy, and existential approaches — often integrated and tailored to the individual rather than applied by formula.

Individual therapy at Therapy Aligned is available to children, teens, and adults in person in Metuchen and virtually across New Jersey. Virtual sessions use HIPAA-compliant telehealth. We accept Horizon BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare/Optum, Oscar, and Medicare.

Trauma Therapy in New Jersey

For many people, the word “trauma” doesn’t quite fit their story — but the weight of a difficult history does. Therapy Aligned clinicians are trained to work with children, adolescents, and adults who carry the residue of adverse, overwhelming, or painful experiences: childhoods that asked too much, relationships that left marks, losses that were never fully grieved, or lives that developed around survival rather than thriving.

Our approach to trauma therapy in New Jersey centers on understanding how the past lives in the present — in emotional patterns, relational dynamics, and the ways we’ve learned to protect ourselves — and gently expanding what’s possible from there. Internal Family Systems (IFS), psychodynamic therapy, and attachment-based approaches are particularly well-suited to this work.

We treat trauma — including complex trauma, PTSD, childhood adversity, attachment wounds, and grief — at the outpatient level. We do not use EMDR, but our clinicians are trained in depth-oriented modalities that are well-suited to sustained trauma work.

Co-Occurring Disorders Treatment in New Jersey

Co-occurring disorders — the overlap of mental health and substance use — are the norm, not the exception, in behavioral health. Depression and alcohol. Anxiety and cannabis. Trauma histories and opioid use. When one goes unaddressed, the other rarely holds. Therapy Aligned was built with this reality at its center.

Co-founders Andrew Kim and Chandni Patel hold dual LCSW and LCADC licensure, meaning they are clinically trained in both domains simultaneously. This isn’t a practice that added addiction services to a mental health model — it’s a practice that started from an integrated understanding of both. Dual diagnosis therapy is available to adults across New Jersey.

Therapy Aligned accepts Horizon BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare/Optum, Oscar, and Medicare for co-occurring disorders treatment in New Jersey.

Addiction Counseling in New Jersey

Addiction counseling in New Jersey at Therapy Aligned is grounded in the understanding that substance use is rarely just about the substance. It’s about what the substance was doing — managing anxiety, numbing pain, creating connection, or providing relief from a mind that never quiets. Our team includes clinicians who hold LCADC licensure and approach addiction with clinical sophistication and genuine respect for the complexity of recovery.

We work with adults navigating alcohol use disorder, opioid use disorder, cannabis dependence, and other substance use challenges in outpatient settings. We incorporate relapse prevention, motivational approaches, and evidence-based modalities including CBT, DBT, ACT, and IFS.

Outpatient addiction counseling is available to New Jersey residents statewide. We accept Horizon BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare/Optum, Oscar, and Medicare.

Outpatient Therapy After IOP or Residential Treatment

Leaving an intensive outpatient program (IOP), partial hospitalization program (PHP), or residential treatment is a pivotal moment — and often a vulnerable one. The structure that held you is gone. Daily life, with all its textures and triggers, returns.

Therapy Aligned provides outpatient step-down care for New Jersey adults transitioning from higher levels of care — including IOP and residential programs throughout the state. We offer the clinical depth of ongoing individual psychotherapy with the flexibility of telehealth scheduling. For clients stepping down from programs addressing co-occurring disorders, our dual-licensed clinicians can continue the integrated work that higher-level programs began.

Couples Therapy in New Jersey

Couples therapy in New Jersey at Therapy Aligned addresses the patterns that develop between two people — the cycles of conflict, the distances that grow, the ways partners can feel profoundly alone even in the same room. Our clinicians approach couples work with attention to what each person brings individually and how those two worlds interact.

Couples therapy is available across New Jersey. Virtual sessions are conducted via secure telehealth, making it easier for couples with scheduling conflicts or geographic constraints to access consistent care.

We accept Horizon BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare/Optum, Oscar, and Medicare for couples therapy in New Jersey, subject to individual plan benefits.

Anxiety & Depression Therapy in New Jersey

Anxiety and depression are among the most common reasons people seek therapy in New Jersey — and among the most underestimated in their complexity. Anxiety isn’t just worry. Depression isn’t just sadness. For many people, these experiences have roots: in early relational patterns, in nervous systems that learned to stay on guard, in lives that moved too fast or demanded too much for too long.

Therapy Aligned clinicians treat anxiety and depression not just as symptoms to manage but as signals worth understanding. We use CBT and DBT for skill-building and behavioral change. We use IFS, psychodynamic, and attachment-based approaches to understand the deeper architecture beneath the presenting issue. And we use ACT and existential approaches to help clients build lives that feel meaningful and navigable.

Therapy for anxiety and depression is available to children, teens, adults, and families across all of New Jersey. We accept Horizon BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare/Optum, Oscar, and Medicare.

Therapy for Major Life Transitions

Life doesn’t always break down neatly into diagnoses. Sometimes what brings someone to therapy is a major transition — a career change, a divorce, the death of a parent, a move, a new identity emerging, a chapter ending without a clear next one. These moments can feel disorienting even when they’re chosen, and overwhelming when they’re not.

Therapy Aligned offers both short-term and longer-term therapy for children, teens, adults, and families navigating major life events. For some clients, a few months of focused work is enough to recalibrate — to process what happened, make sense of where they are, and move forward with clarity. For others, a life transition opens the door to deeper questions about identity, purpose, relationships, or patterns that have been running quietly in the background for years. We’re equipped for both.

Our clinicians draw from existential, psychodynamic, IFS, ACT, and attachment-based approaches — all well-suited to the kind of reflective, meaning-making work that major transitions call for.

How Therapy Aligned is Different

We treat the whole picture.

Co-founders Andrew Kim and Chandni Patel hold dual LCSW and LCADC licensure, licensed in both clinical social work and addiction counseling. In a field where mental health and substance use are still too often treated in separate silos, Therapy Aligned was built from the beginning to hold both. This shapes our clinical culture at every level.

We’re not a platform or a marketplace.

Unlike services that match clients with independent contractors using an algorithm, Therapy Aligned is a clinical group practice. Our clinicians train together in a structured 2-year fellowship, receive ongoing supervision, and share a clinical culture built around depth of care — not volume of sessions. When you work with a Therapy Aligned clinician, you’re working with someone embedded in a collaborative clinical team.

We’re not a franchise.

Large national therapy networks are built for scale. Therapy Aligned was built for clinical depth. Our co-founders are practicing clinicians — not administrators or investors — who designed this practice around the therapeutic relationship, not session throughput. Every clinician here completes a rigorous 2-year fellowship before practicing independently.

If you’re stepping down from an IOP or residential program, we understand the transition. If you’re simply looking for a therapist in New Jersey who will take your care seriously — we’re here.

The Fellowship Model

Most group practices in New Jersey hire clinicians into salaried or fee-split roles with no equity, no ownership pathway, and no long-term stake in the practice they’re building. Therapy Aligned was designed differently. The 2-year fellowship is a clinical incubator — not just a job. Fellows carry a supervised caseload, train in specialized modalities, and build a client base that becomes theirs.

At the end of the fellowship, graduates don’t start over. They take their caseload, open their own Therapy Aligned–affiliated practice, and join the IPA/CIN for group contracting, referrals, and shared infrastructure. We’re not retaining clinicians — we’re growing practice owners.

Supervision is covered. Administrative burden is handled. The EHR, billing, and credentialing systems travel with you. The fellowship exists to remove the barriers that keep talented clinicians from ever building something of their own.

If you’re a provisional or fully licensed therapist looking for a clinical home with a real path to practice ownership, our fellowship was built for you.

The Clinical Tree Model

In most settings, clinical supervisors give their time and expertise to an organization that retains the clinicians they trained. The supervisor builds nothing lasting. Therapy Aligned inverts that. In our model, supervisors recruit their own fellows, design their own fellowship specialization, and build a clinical lineage — a tree — that grows with them.

When a supervisor graduates, their fellows come with them. The caseload transfers. The clinical culture they built doesn’t dissolve into someone else’s practice — it becomes the foundation of their own. TA provides the administrative backbone, the technology platform, and the IPA/CIN network. You provide the clinical vision.

This is a model for clinicians who don’t just want to supervise — they want to build. To incubate small practices rooted in real clinical relationships. To grow a community of independently owned, clinically excellent practices connected by shared values and infrastructure, not corporate hierarchy.

If you’re an experienced clinician looking to build a clinical lineage with a real path to practice ownership, our supervisor track was built for you.