Blog

Suicidality in Therapy: Why Those Most in Need Often Get the Least Support

Suicide is a loaded issue, even within the therapy community. Sulome Anderson's article in The Atlantic, "How Patient Suicide Affects Psychiatrists" addresses numerous issues therapists struggle with. Anderson invokes this issue of the undesirable therapy patient in a very personal way. The author’s friend, Margaret, had numerous suicide attempts, self-harming behaviors, and was constantly in and…

Therapy, dis-equilibrium and growth

Therapy is a necessarily uncomfortable process. Development, in or out of the therapy office, is a disruption of our emotional equilibrium. That's generally--definitionally--disorienting.Too often our NYC therapy patients (and all of us) conflate equilibrium with happiness. Equilibrium suggests a sort of inertia or balance (a term especially revered these days) but we can just as easily have a…

How the Hospital Environment Perpetuates Mental Illness

The Impact of a Space on Mental Health. At Tribeca Therapy, my colleagues and I take great care to create a welcoming space that inspires creativity and growth. The aesthetics and the feel of any office is reflective of the treatment you are going to receive. Our space has a clean modern feel that reflects our professionalism and seriousness about our work. But it also has a playfulness and…

Particular to you, not unique to you

Unique has become a hot word in the zeitgeist the last several years and has taken up its place in the therapy room. My altogether unscientific theory is that its popularity catapulted when the Food Network added a second channel, the Cooking Channel and suddenly had twice the space to fill with stories about food-celebrities you've sort-of heard of tasting pecan-crusted cinnamon rolls and…

How Working With Aspergers Patients Makes Me a Better Therapist

Aspergers Therapy: Making me a better therapist and better at relationships. Here at Tribeca Therapy, we offer Aspergers therapy and see a good number of folks with a formal diagnosis or Aspergers or who find some meaning in Aspergers in helping them make sense of how they make sense of the world. I make an effort to build meaningful relationships with everyone who comes through my door. Yet in…

Notes on anger management in NYC

An anger management workshop in NYC with a difference (or so I was told). A few years ago I was invited by a new colleague to an anger management therapy workshop at her therapy practice in NYC. We had connected as therapist colleagues and had some conversations about the practice of therapy in NYC and the conversation drifted to my (cynical) views on the state of anger management therapy in NYC…

The Overreaching Net of the Bipolar Disorder Diagnosis

Therapy for New Yorkers who hate therapy

My Specialty? I work with New Yorkers who hate therapy.. It started out as a joke. Generally it's another NYC therapist who asks, though often it's regular New Yorkers making small talk.But it's always with the therapists: What's your specialty?The question bugs me. It sets me up to define my therapy practice based on a category of person I work with as defined by that set of persons' maladies or…

PTSD, Trauma therapy and the problem with method

The United States military is one of the largest consumers of clinical psychology in the world and given that we are emerging from a period of sustained military conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the need for PTSD therapy and trauma therapy among combat veterans is high. The military is, if nothing else, a master of efficiency and, unsurprisingly, has brought a so-called empirically-based…

Hit the roof

We started in my therapy office then changed scenes to the office rooftop. There was a lot of anxiety. She was disassociating from her body, meaning having trouble being in our space, present in her body and present with me. So we went for a walk.Many of my patients have a hard time being in their bodies, due to past traumatic events or habits of living small, carrying pain and anxiety in their…

Ritual as a Tool for the Young Adult Transition

Starting the first full-time job as a therapist--lessons for the young adult?. In my therapy work with young adults, a big focus is the transition from student into full-time employee and essentially from adolescence to full-fledged adulthood. The transition can be a bit of a shock to the system as adulthood is a marathon, not a sprint. Cramming and pulling all-nighters are no longer options in…

CBT-plus: Going further with/ than cognitive behavioral therapy

CBT-plus. For a time, I received supervision at the American Cognitive Behavior Institute in NYC, one of the pioneering training centers for the wildly-popular therapy approach of cognitive behavioral therapy. I learned a lot about this method and utilized it in my practice. When I moved to a new NYC therapy practice, Tribeca Therapy, we created our own tailored method of CBT, which for now I’ll…