"The cave you fear to enter holds the
treasure you seek"
- Joseph Campbell
Welcome
Life is hard. Many of us struggle with sadness, anxiety, disconnection, hopelessness, or a feeling of being lost. Perhaps, in the past people would reach out to a wise elder or a clergyman to help work through the pain inherent in being human. Nowadays, therapists (not all of them wise) often have the privilege and responsibility of caring for people’s souls. While some struggles are likely biological in nature, such as severe depression, others are less easy to categorize clinically. Both are appropriate to bring into therapy, even if some issues may end up requiring psychiatric intervention.
While our loved ones can be a wonderful source of support, a therapist can do something a friend often cannot – help take us outside of our mode of thinking, feeling, and acting, inviting us to examine, challenge, and change it, while not expecting the same in return. One can fall apart a little with a therapist, share an embarrassing secret, or admit a frightening thought, knowing that there won’t be a judgement or a threat to the overall relationship, that the therapist won’t be burdened or scared. A knowledgeable clinician can help us work through the concerns, equip us with tools for managing or overcoming them, and invite insight to illuminate one’s past, present, and future.
I am a psychotherapist practicing in New York and New Jersey offering individual therapy to adults, 18 and older. Among the issues I treat are anxiety, depression, adjustment disorders, relationship struggles, postpartum stress, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I also work with people whose issues are not easily captured by a diagnosis, such as existential concerns, questions of meaning, being, and mortality. Since I am fully bilingual (English/Russian), I practice therapy in both languages.