Our Therapy
individual psychotherapy
Psychological problems like anxiety, trauma, depression, chronic stress, relationship difficulties, and complex life transitions contribute to a great deal of suffering. They can lead you and your loved ones to live a smaller life, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Research-based psychotherapy can help you reclaim your life. In our integrative psychotherapy sessions, patients develop insight into their emotional and relationship patterns, attachment style, behaviors, thought processes, and coping mechanisms. Patients also explore problem-solving skills and alternatives to dysfunctional behaviors and thoughts as they strengthen their sense of self-efficacy, internal locus of control, and growth mindset.
Trauma, PTSD, & The Safe & sound Protocol (SSP)
If you’ve gone through a traumatic experience, you may be struggling with upsetting emotions, frightening memories, or a sense of constant danger. You may also feel numb, disconnected, and unable to trust others. Our psychotherapy services aim to help individuals who have been impacted by trauma, adversity, and loss to re-establish a sense of safety and predictability in the world. We do this by providing psychosomatic evidence-based treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related issues such as acute stress disorder. The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), developed by neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Porges, can be part of our trauma healing interventions. The SSP is a five-hour, research-based, auditory intervention designed to regulate the autonomic nervous system, and improve attachment security, social engagement, and anxious states. Based on Dr. Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, the SSP exerts a calming effect on our physiological and emotional states. This opens the door for improved healing, communication, and social ease.
Compassion-focused couples therapy
Couples counseling usually involves an intense focus on improving communication patterns within the couple. In a compassionate and equanimous way, the therapist enters the couple’s way of life more directly, as they bring their habits and routines with each other directly into the session. During sessions, our integrative psychotherapy approach promotes open and caring dialog, offers feedback about the couple's interactions, and fosters the couple's ability to bring about insight to solve their relationship conflicts.
Integrative Psychotherapy for Adults, College Students, and Couples
Therapy for Emerging Adults & College Students
We are dedicated to meeting the unique needs of emerging adults, college, and graduate students in New York State. Anxiety and stress rates are alarming among young adults and college students. Challenges faced by emerging adults, such as the culture of academic stress, increased student loan debt, job insecurity, and political and environmental turbulence, are risk factors for developing or exacerbating stress-related conditions. Our psychotherapy services are offered online throughout New York State including New York City, Albany, and the Poughkeepsie area.
Emotional and Professional Burnout
Life becomes more complex
Compassion-Focused Therapy in Emerging adulthood
Compassion-Focused Therapy in Emerging adulthood
Academic and career goals, navigating friendships and romantic relationships, questioning identity, acclimating to a different location, and enduring major life transitions are all common themes in your 20s and 30s. As a result, it would be naïve to assume that college students are exclusively concerned with their academics. While this is an exciting moment for you, the pressure you feel from carrying the weight of your expanding responsibilities and having to make important decisions about your future can be overwhelming.
Compassion-Focused Therapy in Emerging adulthood
Compassion-Focused Therapy in Emerging adulthood
Compassion-Focused Therapy in Emerging adulthood
The demands of complex life, coupled with your emerging identity, family expectations, and stress-inducing environment can contribute to feelings of burnout. Compassion-focused therapy is an excellent intervention for emerging adults who may be facing problems related to self-criticism, losses, questions, and unprocessed issues that might arise during this time.
The Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP)
What is the safe & sound protocol?
The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) is an evidence-based listening therapy designed to improve emotional/behavioral regulation, social engagement, and auditory processing through filtered frequency music. As a practical application of Polyvagal Theory, the SSP acts as a non-invasive, acoustic vagal nerve stimulator, helping to re-tune the nervous system to better support connection, collaboration, and resilience. The SSP involves listening to specially filtered music through headphones alongside a provider, in-person or remotely. Suitable for children and adults, the SSP has demonstrated benefits for individuals with trauma, anxiety, sensory processing differences, and more.
The Safe & Sound Protocol Highlights
The SSP is
- A five-hour auditory intervention developed and patented by Dr. Stephen Porges, author of the Polyvagal Theory.
- Designed to improve emotional and behavioral state regulation, sound sensitivity, and auditory processing.
- Activates the patient's social engagement system (e.g., trust, social safeness, secure attachment), helping to accelerate and enhance therapeutic outcomes.
- Supports physiological state regulation (e.g., feeling safe in your body), allowing for greater resilience.
SSP Video Introduction
"Once we recognize that the experiences within our societal institutions such as schools, hospitals, and churches are characterized by chronic evaluations that trigger feelings of danger and threat, we can see that these institutions can be as disruptive to health as political unrest, fiscal crisis, or war.” ― Stephen W. Porges, The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe
Polyvagal theory: the science of feeling safe
Developed by world-renowned researcher and Unyte’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Dr. Stephen Porges, Polyvagal Theory focuses on what is happening in the body and the nervous system, and explains how our sense of safety, danger, or life threat can impact our behavior. Understanding Polyvagal Theory gives us a scientific framework that can be applied through physiological, or “bottom-up” therapies, to help change and improve how we feel, think and connect with others.
SSP Testimonial for Complex Trauma & Anxiety
As a research-based intervention, the SSP has been shown to help individuals cope with:
- Social and emotional difficulties
- Anxiety and trauma-related challenges
- Inattention
- Stressors that impact social engagement
- Internal agitation, irritability, and reactivity
- The Autism Spectrum
- Auditory sensitivities
- Physical conditions exacerbated by stress
While positive shifts in nervous system arousal could be seen immediately, those also gradually unfold over the course of 2 months as the patient's nervous system integrates and engages with newly available information. If you have tried everything and nothing has worked, it could be because your nervous system is in a fight, flight or freeze response. The SSP is designed to help your body shift out of this survival state and orient toward healing.
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