ABOUT

Your therapy is your own unique experience, and nobody fits into a box.  With my wide range of skills and approaches from nearly 20 years of experience, I try my best to offer you an integrative approach that fits your needs as close as possible.  This approach includes talk therapy using different methods, body awareness, mindfulness or Jungian Sandplay therapy.  I introduce these ways of working in the first few sessions, and we review your progress with me as we move along.  Your therapy should be a collaborative experience between us.

A therapeutic encounter is an unusual one, as it contains elements of many professional and personal relationships, yet it is never one of those exclusively.  I bring my utmost positive regard, warmth, relatedness, high level of clinical experience and commitment to your well-being to ensure that you feel safe and protected in the therapeutic space with me. We know from research and years of clinical practice that your relationship with a trusted and competent therapist is key to a successful therapy. 

I am a clinical social worker (LCSW NY)/licensed psychotherapist and supervisor with a BA in Psychology from the University of Chicago and MSW from New York University. I am fully fluent in English, French and Russian.  My areas of specialty are:

·       loss and bereavement

·       trauma and trauma-informed therapy, including sexual abuse and domestic violence

·       immigration/cultural adjustment and identity formation for children, adolescents and adults

·       child psychotherapy/family work

I also have a lot of experience working with various mood disorders, relational difficulties and couple therapy.

I am a Certified Jungian Sandplay therapist and a Teaching Member of Israeli and International Society for Sandplay Therapy (ISTA and ISST), which is the highest level of membership and training.  Jungian Sandplay is a non-verbal, creative and expressive therapy that allows you to express and work through challenges and dilemma from a completely different angle.  By accessing your creative and image-based right brain processing and symbolic language, you can gain access to a new level of inner resources and address your challenges in a way that bypasses your rational side.  The tactile element of Sandplay is an inviable tool in a healing process.

When dealing with traumatic experience or any situations where you lived through strong emotions, sometimes talking is not enough.  Trauma is not only limited to acts of extreme violence or war.  In fact my definition of trauma includes a wide range of painful emotional experience, ranging from rape, betrayal or divorce.  What is often needed is an integrated approach that helps the body to process what happened on the somatic level.  I am a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP), which means that I have additional training in the most current approaches to working with trauma, such as Somatic Experiencing, EMDR and other ways of incorporating our growing understanding of neurophysiology of trauma.   

 My work has been published in the Journal of Sandplay Therapy, and I contributed a book chapter to a volume called Into the Heart of Sandplay Therapy.  I also offered professional training and participated in conferences in Israel as well as Romania, Russia, UK and the United States.

With my childhood spent in Ukraine and having lived in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Israel, my life experience offers unique outlook at life’s challenges, especially when we are living not in the country of our birth.  My linguistic fluency in French, English and Russian and deeper understanding of cultural adaptation and growth that can happen in moving abroad offers a different dimension of understanding and insight to your therapy with me.