My name is Michele.

I’m a fourth generation New Yorker from Astoria, Queens dedicated to providing culturally competent therapy that takes intersectionality and formative influences into account. I am very familiar with systems that didn’t want me to thrive in them and therefore am passionate about helping individuals with systemic challenges. I’ve learned to thrive despite adversity and I want to help you do it too. 


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Telehealth & In-Person Therapy in New York City

I provide in depth talk psychotherapy. I believe change comes from perspective change. Genuine perspective change.

If you could “amazon prime” your trauma away, you would not have sought out therapy. I don’t believe in “quick fixes” for complex mental health problems.

“It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found”

— D. W. Winnicott

  • I do not believe most people fit cleanly within most diagnoses. I also do not work from an over-pathologizing or diagnosis first approach. Labels are incredibly limiting. Yes, sometimes they are also life saving.

    What’s more important:

    You are living life better, you are improving socially, relationally, existentially.

    Relational therapy might work for someone with “people pleasing tendencies” but someone might be neurodivergent and need a more structured approach.

    I am flexible in my treatment style when it is called for, and flexibility is often called for. Two people can be struggling with something similar and yet need two entirely different approaches. You also could have major success working with a “diagnosis” in one person - and less with the other even with the same “approach” due to an individual’s motivation level to be in therapy.

    Here’s the intention:

    My intention is to to be less “yeah, I have the solutions for everyone, and therapy goes exactly this way for these things” (Spoiler Alert: that would be ridiculous) and more- “how can I give someone an idea of my strengths and how I think so they can best determine if they’d like to work with me?”

    At the same time, you are in yellow flag territory (caution territory) if you find a provider that professes to be interested equally in everything.

    Listing 30 specializations or highly specific interests wouldn’t make sense. The pretense to be a specialist in everything renders the word specialist as meaningless.

    I prefer humanistic, psychoanalytic and relational work over behavioral work by a significant degree, and I have developed some preferences along the way. This doesn’t make me limited to these preferences.

  • Psychoanalysis is a means of looking at the unconscious, attachment patterns, major development, and family patterns. It’s the bedrock of most therapy- even behavior therapies draw from psychoanalysis, often using similar words to describe some of the same things.

    There are many different kinds of therapy, there is Freudian Psychoanalysis, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Object Relations Perspective, Projective identification and more. This is most likely jargon to you.

    If it matters, I consider myself to have an object relations and relational analysis primarily but draw on different approaches, from Lacan and other figures.


    Psychodynamic therapy is a more accessible and abbreviated form of psychoanalytic therapy. Traditional psychoanalysis is typically 3-5 x a week, and treatment could last years for pragmatic and financial reasons.

    It’s important for you to know that I offer psychodynamic therapy, and often this is thrown around to describe “I think about your family sometimes” but I am analytically informed, receiving biweekly supervision from an Analyst, completed free association training, and have clients that have worked with me for years twice a week.

    I plan on attending psychoanalysis school and offering traditional psychoanalysis.

    Currently, I offer psychodynamic therapy with a very strong analytic foundation.

  • Therapy is a container where your relational patterns out in the real world come to life in the therapeutic sense.

    I also think the relationship between the therapist and client is critical. and is a window into the problems and even strengths you have outside of the therapy room.

  • Dialectical behavior therapy is a means of holding the dialectic, or two truths, or two conflicting beliefs. It’s often used to treat borderline personality or other behaviors.

    DBT doesn’t need to be exclusive to treating borderline personality and is great for distress tolerance and mindfulness, and cognitive dissonance in general.

  • Exposure and Response Prevention is used to treat OCD usually by exposing someone overtime in intervals to confront their fears. Overtime, your fear lessens. ERP doesn’t have to exclusively be used for OCD.

    I received 9 weeks of training in ERP and am supervised by an OCD specialist.

Areas of interest

  • I provide therapy for activists, and those that are being crushed under the weight of jobs they don’t care about. I provide therapy to those who are tired of pretending that all of this is normal. Isolating and exhausting, isn’t it? Therapy for internalized capitalism.

  • I believe that everyone has different layers of identity.

    I work with those who have faced systemic trauma and racial trauma in many settings or even amongst those they know personally.

    Intersectionality is a way to look at how different levels of identity in an individual overlap and interact. This phrase was understood and essentially formulated by black feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw.

    Basically, you have many different layers: your race, your gender, mental health, class, sexuality, where you’re from etc, create different layers of privilege and oppression that interact. The interaction is important to consider, and no one is simply “oppressed” , “privileged” or “marginalized”. You are complex! This interaction contributes to your mental health and how you show up, having a provider that can see those layers is critical in their understanding of you.

  • I offer therapy for those who have endured great socioeconomic trauma, and are tired of venting to therapists that don’t get why the bankruptcy your family has filed for has torn your family apart- or why the first of the month is an existential threat.

  • My therapy frame is relational.

    Attachment patterns and other things you struggle with come to life in a relational treatment frame.

  • People with BPD “split” - this is where they think in black and white ways about people and other subjects.

    Splitting helps one do away with nuance and compartmentalize pain. In a very literal sense, it’s immature. Someone with a complex and healthy understanding of morality does not think someone is “all good” or “all bad”.

    Psychoanalyst Stern, described borderline as being halfway between neurosis and psychosis. This was later formalized by psychoanalyst Kernberg.

    Those with BPD split far more often and more extremely, harming their health in a myriad of ways. If you have BPD you may already be aware it’s hard to find a therapist.

    The individual with borderline typically vacillates between valuing and devaluing the therapist- more than several times- causing the therapist to eventually…quit. Does this remind you of any relationships in your personal life?

    The relational therapy frame will eventually ask for you to tolerate an imperfect therapist.

    I use a blend of relational therapy and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) to treat borderline. I believe the best treatment for borderline personality disorder is “integration”, which means helping you think in the “Gray”

  • I enjoy working with individuals in transition, those who are gender nonconforming, those who are narrowing and expanding their gender- those who are celebrating their gender- and those who are suffering under “Gender”

    I love working with queer clients, those coming to terms with their sexuality, or other struggles.

  • Therapy for those that almost cannot function without their partner, twin, dog, whatever. Therapy for those who feel they are excessively dependent and want to become more confident. Dependence is good. Too much is dysfunctional.

  • Anxiety has a lot to do with avoidance, keeping yourself safe, avoiding challenges, and a self esteem that needs to potentially be a little stronger or more rooted in reality.

  • It can be worthwhile to contextualize bipolar disorder psychoanalytically and to consider the origins of manic episodes and other stark mood shifts as potentially mirroring patterns in one’s life and relationships. These major mood vicissitudes may stem from family dynamics, early relational experiences, past trauma, or other formative influences. Overall lifestyle can be examined and habit formation can often aid treatment.

  • Sex is often a neglected topic by many therapists- and yet it is so important. I would hope that you become comfortable enough and I earn your trust so that you can discuss stigmatized subjects comfortably in therapy, like: sex, trauma, masturbation, kink, poly, or whatever else in your therapy sessions.

    I provide therapy to those struggling with romantic relationships, or even with the relationship they have with themselves.

  • I enjoy working with people who are navigating the nuances of gaming culture (recreationally or even in the professional space)

    I like video games.

    I was featured in the Washington Post for my insight on the psychological aspects of the videogame “Silent Hill F”

    I am familiar with how quickly gaming culture is changing and enjoy working with this demographic. I have worked with clients struggling with video game addiction.

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