I’ve been a therapist for over sixteen years and the thing I keep coming back to is that people already know something is wrong long before they walk through the door. They’ve known for months, sometimes years. What finally brings them in is the moment when the weight of carrying it alone becomes heavier than the fear of asking for help.
I built Centered by the Sea for that moment.
Hi, I’m Dr. Jessica Cesare…
I grew up surrounded by this work long before I ever studied it.
The people I loved were dealing with addiction and mental health struggles, and the help they needed was either out of reach or didn’t exist at all. I watched what happens when people go without support for too long, and it shaped every decision I’ve made since.
What struck me most, even as a teenager, was how alone people were in their pain. Everyone around them cared, but nobody knew what to do with that care. The adults were overwhelmed or in denial, and the systems that were supposed to help either couldn’t reach us or weren’t built for people like us.
By the time I lost a close friend, I already knew that I wanted to spend my life making sure fewer people fell through those gaps.
Every room I’ve sat in taught me something.
I earned my doctorate at the Derner Institute of Psychology at Adelphi University, one of the first university-based professional schools of psychology in the country. The clinical training I did alongside that degree is where I learned what kind of therapist I was going to be.
I started in a children’s state psychiatric hospital, spending a year with kids whose behavior was telling a story that nobody had stopped to listen to yet. From there I moved through a college counseling centre dedicated to low-cost care, where I saw how many young people were struggling without any idea that help was available to them. Then I completed a full-time APA-approved internship at Nassau University Medical Center where I worked with patients from age six through older adulthood in both inpatient and outpatient settings. I also spent time in a long-term care facility with psychiatric and medically complex patients, many of whom were unhoused or managing conditions that most clinicians never encounter in private practice.
Every one of those settings taught me something different about what it means to sit with a person in pain, but the through line was always the same…
People heal when someone is willing to see them clearly and stay.
Then I met the person who showed me what this work is supposed to feel like
I spent ten years with a therapist whose presence in the room was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. He didn’t try to fix me or rush me toward some version of progress I wasn’t ready for. He was consistent and genuinely curious about who I was underneath the ways I’d learned to protect myself.
That relationship taught me more about what healing looks like than any clinical training ever could.
He passed away a few years ago, and I can still feel the impact of the work we did in how I live my life and how I show up for my own clients. The way he was with me is the way I try to be with every person who walks through my door. Warm, unhurried, honest and willing to sit with whatever comes up without flinching.
That experience is why I believe so deeply that the therapeutic relationship is where the real change happens. Techniques and frameworks have their place, but what heals is the connection between two people in a room, built on honesty and trust over time.
I’m still learning. That part never stops.
Over the past few years, my focus has expanded into couples work and it’s become the area I’m most passionate about. I’ve invested heavily in advanced training around infidelity, sexual disconnection, attachment ruptures, and the particular toll of inequitable gender dynamics in long-term partnerships. That last one has become impossible to ignore in the modern world.
I see a growing number of women who work full-time, run the household, manage the children’s lives and carry the emotional weight of the entire family while their partner struggles to handle a fraction of that load. Their stories are remarkably similar and the frustration they carry is real. Helping couples see those dynamics clearly and start to change them is some of the most rewarding work I do.
I’ve also always had a natural connection with adolescents and young adults. The way a teenager can be heartbreakingly vulnerable one moment and fiercely independent the next is endlessly compelling. They’re still carrying pieces of childhood while building something entirely new, and getting to be part of that process is a privilege I’ve never lost appreciation for.
But one therapist can’t serve an entire community
After years in solo practice, I kept running into the same problem. There were more people who needed help than I could see on my own. The demand for quality, affordable therapy in this area has always outpaced the supply.
So I built Centered by the Sea. A group practice in Long Beach where people can access the kind of care I believe in without waiting months for an opening or paying out of pocket for the privilege. Every therapist on this team is someone I trust to do this work with the same depth and care that I bring to my own sessions. This community deserves more than one therapist working seven days a week trying to keep up. It deserves a team.
I supervise doctoral candidates on their clinical work because I believe the quality of the therapeutic relationship is too important to leave to chance. The therapists I train learn the same thing I learned from my own therapist: stay present and don’t rush the process.
When you come here, you’re getting a team that understands what it takes to help someone find their center again.
What This Means for You
When you come to Centered by the Sea, you’re walking into a practice built by someone who has been on both sides of the therapy room. I know what it feels like to need help and I know what it feels like when the right person finally shows up. That knowledge runs through everything we do here, from the way we match you with the right person, to the way we check in to make sure the work is landing.
You don’t have to have the words for what you’re going through yet. You just have to be willing to start.
We’ll figure out the rest together.
Our Values
Every person who walks through our door has a story that only they can tell. Our therapists don’t come in with a checklist or a predetermined idea of what’s going on. They come in curious. They want to know what your life looks like from the inside, not just what brought you to therapy. That curiosity is what allows the work to go somewhere real, because when your therapist is interested in understanding you, you start to feel safe enough to be honest about the things you’ve been keeping to yourself.
Growth doesn’t come from being told what you want to hear. Our therapists will sit with you in difficult conversations and reflect back things you might not be ready to see yet. They do it with care and they do it with timing, but they don’t shy away from the truth when the truth is what you need. That kind of honesty is rare in most relationships, and for a lot of people it’s the first time someone has been straight with them without an agenda attached.
You’re not a collection of symptoms. Who you are and how you got here informs everything about how we work with you. We pay attention to the full context of your life because the things you’re struggling with don’t exist in isolation. We don’t compartmentalize because your life doesn’t work that way. When we understand the full picture, we can help you in ways that a narrower lens never could.
We could hand you a list of coping strategies and send you on your way. It might even help for a while. But we’re more interested in helping you understand why you needed those strategies in the first place. That takes longer and it asks more of you, but the people who do this work don’t just feel better temporarily. The change runs deep because it comes from real understanding.
We accept most major insurance plans because we believe cost should never be the thing standing between someone and the help they need. We work with people across the lifespan, from young children through older adults, and we see individuals and couples as well as whole families. We welcome everyone regardless of their background or how messy things feel right now. If you need help, you belong here.
Everything we do is built on the connection between you and your therapist. That relationship is where the patterns show up and where trust gets built over time. It’s why we take the matching process seriously and why we check in regularly about how things are going. The right therapeutic relationship can be one of the most honest and transformative connections in your life, and protecting that is at the center of everything we do.
You’ve Been Treading Water For Too Long
Good News: We’re At The Beach.
Reach Out
Call us 516-123-4568, email hello@centeredbythesea.com, or fill out the contact form and tell us what’s going on.
Find Your Fit
We’ll check your insurance and match you with the right therapist for what you need.
Start the Work
Meet your therapist in person at our Long Beach office or online from wherever you are.