Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) therapists in Village of Pelham, New York NY

I'm a licensed clinical social worker and certified EMDR therapist who loves helping people heal from trauma and relationship struggles. I'm collaborative, intentional, and a bit of a nerd! I'm always looking for ways to grow and improve to best help my clients.  

Let me help you to feel better, whether it is depression, anxiety or addiction, I can help guide you through this process.  

In our sessions, clients can expect a focus on self-care and personal empowerment with encouragement to prioritize your well-being while managing responsibilities. I believe in equipping clients with the tools to navigate challenges, embrace their strengths, and cultivate resilience. Together, we will work toward meaningful progress, helping clients develop healthier relationships with themselves and their responsibilities, ultimately leading to transformative growth and fulfillment. I work with clients who are committed to their growth, motivated for change, open to communication, and ready to apply guidance.  

If you’ve been holding it all together for everyone else but feel like you’re falling apart inside, you’re not alone, and you don’t have to keep doing it that way. I work with women who are navigating life’s transitions while carrying the weight of expectations, responsibilities, and emotional overwhelm. On the outside, you may look like you have it all together, but internally, you may feel exhausted, disconnected, or unsure of who you are anymore. Therapy with me is a space where you can be real, no pressure to perform, no need to have the “right” words. I bring a warm, honest, and down-to-earth approach, helping you make sense of what you’re feeling while also giving you practical tools to move forward. Whether you’re dealing with burnout, relationship challenges, motherhood, or simply trying to find your way back to yourself, we’ll work together to help you feel more grounded, confident, and emotionally supported.  

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.  

As a therapist, I approach this work through a somatic lens, recognizing that what we experience emotionally is often held in the body, not just in our thoughts. I support clients in understanding their patterns while also helping them build a more regulated and grounded relationship with themselves. This means we’re not only talking about what’s happening, but also paying attention to how it’s showing up physically and how to shift those responses over time. Whether you’re navigating anxiety, depression, trauma, or a major life transition, my goal is to create a space that feels steady, collaborative, and connected, where you can feel supported both in your internal experience and in how you relate to others in your life.  

Addiction is a struggle, for the addict and those around the addict. It is baffling and you can stop trying to conquer addiction alone. Working with an experienced addiction therapist may help you stop the mental gymnastics, the self-defeating behavior. You may begin to resolve issues with work, family and friends. Experienced guidance will guide you to a new perspective on how to stop your struggles with addiction and begin to build a new way of thinking about addiction and your self image. Let me guide you through the fog into a new life. I work the addict or affected family members, starting where the clients are today. Clients' are encouraged to look inward and assess how they wove substances into their life, while shutting out their surroundings. Clients' will identify their interests and goals. Together, you can find freedom.  

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 really enjoy working in the mental health field. I am passionate about helping others on their mental health journey. I use multiple modalities in my approach with clients. I believe in order for a client to reach their goals they must have a strong therapeutic alliance with their therapist. I always strive to make sure my clients feel welcomed, understood, heard and respected.
I have experience with the following disorders: Life Challenges Depression/Mood Brief Psychotic Anxiety OCD and Traumatic Stress Disorders. I encourage to reach out via email or phone to set up a time to talk.  

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.