About us
The practice behind the coastline.
Founded by Kay Wenger, LMFT, LPCC, to put excellent clinical care and genuine human warmth side by side. Not a bigger practice. A better one.
Laguna Beach Counseling was founded in 2001 on a deceptively simple idea: that excellent clinical care and genuine human warmth could exist side by side, in the same room, without either one crowding out the other. Kay Wenger had spent years training therapists by then, and she had watched how easily a growing practice starts treating people like a caseload. She wanted to build the opposite of that.
So this was never designed to be the biggest practice in Orange County. It was designed to be one where you're a person, not a slot on a conveyor belt. Does that sound like a small ambition? It isn't. Staying a place where the work actually goes deep, while everything around it races to scale, turns out to be the harder thing to build, and the whole point of building it.
The founder
A place where excellent clinical care and genuine human warmth could exist side by side.
That sentence is the whole reason this practice exists. Kay Wenger spent years training therapists before she built it, and she had watched how quickly a growing practice starts treating people like a caseload. She wanted the opposite, and she is still in the room, still seeing clients, and still supervising every associate personally.
Kay WengerLMFT #38183, LPCC #1450, founder
The actual place
Small enough to feel like somewhere, not anywhere.
Four walls on Third Street, a few blocks back from the water. No bank of therapy suites, no numbered doors, no reception desk between you and the person you came to see. It looks like this because a practice that stays this size can afford to look like this.
Where to find usThe quality of the work matters more than the scale of the business.
How this place is built
A promise, not a slogan
Never a therapy factory is easy to say and hard to hold. Here is what we actually mean by it, stated as things you can hold us to.
- Small on purpose We stay a size where the person across from you knows your name and your story, not just your appointment time. Growth is never allowed to cost us that.
- Neighbors, not a market We're not chasing a demographic. We're serving the people Kay runs into at the market and at the Susi Q. That changes how the work feels, and it should.
- Depth over volume Success here is whether the work actually helped you, not how many sessions moved through the calendar. We measure the right thing on purpose.
- The founder is still in the room Kay still practices, and personally trains and supervises every associate. The standard doesn't get watered down as it passes from her to the team.
Here's the promise underneath all of it, said plainly: you will never be treated like an appointment being processed. Not on the phone, not in the room, not on the way out the door. The moment this place starts to feel like a machine that turns people into billing codes is the moment it has lost the only thing that made it worth building. We would rather stay small and stay real.
Meet the practice
Three ways to get to know us
Kay Wenger
The founder: thirty-plus years in the room, NRMFT co-founder, and the person whose standard the whole practice is built around.
Meet KayOur team
The Pepperdine-trained associates Kay personally supervises. The free call matches you to the right one for what you're navigating.
Meet the teamOur approach
How the work actually works here: relationship first, technique second, and why that order matters more than it sounds.
Our approachThis is the part where you say hello.
If a practice built like this is the kind you've been looking for, the first step is a free 15 to 20 minute call. No pressure, just a chance to see whether we're the right fit for you.
Free and confidential. Be seen within 24 hours.
Navigating Life's Waves Together