Therapists that treat Teens in Bedford Hills, New York NY

Cheerful Heart was created to offer the kind of care many women need but struggle to find—care that takes women’s pain seriously, especially Black women’s pain. The practice was founded by Shakira K. O’Garro, LMHC-D, whose lived experience with severe stage IV endometriosis, adenomyosis, and medical trauma informs every layer of this work. Like many clients, she navigated years of dismissal within medical systems and discovered how deeply those experiences can impact mental health and faith. Cheerful Heart exists so women no longer have to choose between clinical excellence and cultural or spiritual understanding. This is a space where faith questions are welcome, anger toward God is met with compassion, and healing is supported by genuine loving kindness.  

My name is Elaine Hernandez-Cordova, but my friends all call me Elena! I am an Omnistic, bi-sexual, Latin-American psychotherapist, life coach and author. For the last 20 years, I have dedicated my life to practicing a holistic approach to lifestyle adjustments for myself, my family and the systems we all reside in. I like to consider all of humanity to be my family, and I try to reflect this in my work. I was born in an impoverished part of Brooklyn, NY where I was adopted by a prominent lawyer and his wife who couldn’t bear children due to an early battle with cancer. This inspired my natural inclination to bond with people, both personally and professionally, and maintain meaningful connections. Seeing how imbalanced our society was, and eager to be the change I wanted to see in the world, I studied for a Master of Social Work from the School of Public Health at the University of Central Florida in 2003. I became increasingly interested in the mind-body connection, and so I became a yoga therapist in 2013 through the Long Island Yoga School. I provide therapeutic services in relation to addiction and post-traumatic stress pro-bono at local hospitals and community centers. My personal experiences and professional expertise in mental health and substance use afford me powerful insight into the healing practices of the dually diagnosed. I am a proud social advocate, and regularly devote time to visit with veterans, inmates, consumers and the underserved. I encourage people to take time to write letters, make phone calls, sign petitions, send emails and donate to causes that matter to the unique values of the individual. Don’t be afraid of being a voice in the community of your choice. If you don’t stand for something then you will fall for anything!  

Life is not always what we anticipated, and can be very challenging and upsetting. Life can present a subtle slap in the face or a punch in the gut. My goal is to assist people in difficult and traumatic times to navigate those time as well as possible. While helping individual to understand their choices going forward, I work with kindness and sensitivity to the circumstances.  

I belive each person has an intrinsic ability for healing and transformation that can be activated and supported through therapy. My work is to assist you in this process, utilizing my advanced training in a variety of effective therapeutic approaches in a safe,confidential and non-judgmental space.  

I believe that deciding to make changes in your life is courageous. My approach is to work as a partner, collaborating with my patients as they journey towards a more fulfilling life, building new skills and looking at the world in a new way. I use a cognitive-behavioral approach that focuses on developing new skills, problem solving and altering beliefs that are holding you back from living at your best. My goal is to help patients overcome problems with anxiety, depression, addictive behaviors, substance abuse, anger management and issues related to grief and loss. By doing so they can achieve improved mood, increased self-esteem, enhanced sense of control, reduced stress and have more rewarding relationships. CBT works by helping patients examine their beliefs about the challenges in their lives, develop new coping skills and create a more positive outlook. By looking at this website, you have already started your process of change.  

Justine Astacio, LMHC, is a licensed Mental Health Counselor and CEO of Lotus Theory, a company committed to helping you achieve holistic health and overall balance. Lotus Theory’s mission is to inspire healthy living by engaging the mind and the body in our approach to therapeutic wellness. We believe in the powerful connection between the mind and body, and we are committed to treating our clients as whole individuals with unique needs. Justine and her team of dedicated clinicians at Lotus Theory provide therapy services designed for anyone seeking positive change from issues like low self-esteem, self-forgiveness, difficulty letting go, or feeling unclear about their life’s path.  

PVMHC has several highly trained clinicians who treat many clients including those with; anxiety, depression (including postpartum), trauma, gender dysphoria/LGBTQ, learning disabilities, ADHD, & more. We aim to create long-term relationships, offer fast and flexible scheduling, and ensure we make each session as beneficial as possible. We work with adolescents and adults who are looking to better understand their symptoms, manage their emotions/stressors, and create a path to an enjoyable future. We offer a safe virtual space for you to set goals and incorporate coping skills into your everyday life.  

My goal as a therapist is to create a warm, supportive, genuine and safe environment where you alone or with your significant other feel comfortable sharing with me your negative repetitive pattern that prevents you from from sailing through your relationship more smoothly. I want to help you to reinvent your marriage or long term relationship so that your lives intersect in the same space so I can get the opportunity to teach you how to respect each other's differences and teach you how you can agree to disagree and yet you are still able to say "I love you." I can help you both to come up with a common love language when you are home and happy or not so happy; and I can also teach you another love language that works well publicly. One works well in the bedroom and the other works well in front of strangers. All couples must develop love languages that work well privately and publicly. I want your relationship to maintain the love that brought you together in the first place. You may wonder why your love is not consistent, and you may notice that the respect you once had for one another has dissipated and the personal meaning once attached to your relationship is no longer there.. Most couples in your situation have what I refer to as their own "dance of anger" that happens again and again and again. By this, I mean couples fight about different issues but the way that they fight takes on a repetitive negative pattern and that pattern is their way of expressing anger and/or rage, regardless of the argument at hand. I refer to the way that most couples argue and fight as their "dance of anger". Remember, you can't change your partner and that is why you need professional advice. I can be your "go to person" who can teach you how to effectively communicate when you once again have disagreements that can be a threat to the survival of your relationship. I only accept accept couples who really want to preserve their relationship and can tell me that they are willing to put in the hard work, because married monogamous relationships are difficult to sustain, but by taking your marriage vows seriously, you both signed up for a loving partnership for a lifetime. Taking your vows and dancing at your wedding is just not enough because everyone's life is difficult. Life is more like "a bowl of cherries" and despite the succulent juice from the cherries, you will still have to deal with "the pits." We can't always dance through our problems. Despite making yourselves an expensive wedding or having gone to the court to take your vows,-what all married couples dwell on is trust. Is one person feeling like they don't trust the other or both feel the same way when it comes to trust, then pick up your phone to call Lorna Hayim-Baker at Riverdale Therapy & Counseling Services. I offer a free phone consultation before accepting new couples. I tell the truth when I counsel couples, and therefore, I vet each couple before I agree to meet with them in an "in person session" to avoid sessions where one partner or both can blow up my session because their personality does not mesh well with mine. My heart goes out to everyone who is about to experience "a bad breakup" or "a disastrous divorce.". I go many extra miles for each and every couple who comes into my office. I try to understand their shared stories and having a shared story is a lot easier to problem solve because they are in sync; but more often than not, I have to hear out each partner because they each have different stories to tell. I decipher their own personal stories because, in reality, there are two different versions of the same presenting problem and then their is the third version which is the most realistic story. It is only fair to hear each partner's voice as they often come to session offering their own point of view, but if one pays close attention, it often seems like there are 2-3 different problems; but in reality, there are two different sides about he same problem and sometimes even a third side that the therapist discovers and is being presented by each person. All three stories are different versions of the same problem. All sides are carefully listened to and It takes time to hear each person's interpretation of the same arguments. All stories are aired and I do my best to come up with possible solutions by providing lots of feedback. Couples can disagree with me about possible solutions that are offered. I have become very attuned to my couples because I have been doing this type of therapy for a very long time. I listen carefully to their presenting problems before providing feedback. I am not always right but I am pretty intuitive at this point in my career. Someone must try to understand the couple who came in to preserve their relationship and the hope is that I, as their therapist will remain neutral and unbiased in order to shed light on why the couples are not hearing each other as they each struggle to voice their complaints. More often than not, one or both partners become very defensive and neither one is listening to the other and their fight escalates. That's why they need an unbiased and caring therapist to intervene and help the couple deescalate by having them share the details of the original complaint that turned into a communication breakdown. Couples begin fighting right in front of me & my job is to stop their dispute and call a halt to their bickering so we can examine why their communication pattern broke down in the first place. Both partners are acting out and becoming nasty and defensive. Each partner had the same wish, which was to have their voice heard as he or she expresses their own complaint. I need to point out when their wheels are spinning but they are getting nowhere and they are in fact, stuck. Couples need to stop and listen to each other so I can help them come up with a plan that can get them "unstuck." To be an effective couples' counselor means that at the end of the session, the couple walks out with a sense of having a shared understanding of their problems and with a shared sense of hope because they learned how to tackle the types of ineffective communications that lead to "blow out fights" Hopefully, I will be your therapist who teaches you how to not add fuel to the fire. I want to be part of the solution and teach couples how to stop turning molehills into mountains. I am the therapist who loves watching love as it grows and makes both partners seem so much more mature.  

I work with couples to help them with their communication and improve the health of their relationship, and my service include use of the Couples Therapy Assistant (CTA) app with my clients. When my practice becomes full, I refer clients to other therapists who use the CTA app. I also work with divorced couples and other former couples with children to help them deal with the stresses of their situations and learn co-parenting approaches that will be in the best interests of their children. I help divorced and separated high conflict couples to separate their former marital hostilities from their ongoing parental responsibilities, and to achieve amicable co-parenting arrangements.