SERVICES
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, also known as insight-oriented therapy, focuses on unconscious processes as they come up in a person’s present thoughts and behavior. The goals of psychodynamic therapy include the client’s realized self-awareness and an understanding of the influence of their past experiences on their present behavior and relationship patterns. This increased self-awareness helps break negative patterns concerning relationships, anxious and depressive thoughts, procrastination, and feelings of guilt and shame. Psychodynamic Therapy is a collaborative process between the Therapist and the Client to unblock the client’s natural psychological drive, fostering healing and fulfillment in life, work, and love.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or (CBT) is based on the idea that much of how one feels is determined by what we think. CBT seeks to identify and then correct or augment these problematic thoughts in order to not only think more rationally, but to feel better and change one’s behaviors to be more in line with personal values and goals. CBT can be effective treatment for a wide range of mental health issues including Anxiety and Panic Disorders, Depression, Substance use issues, and Phobias. In CBT, the therapist can help the client identify thinking errors and cognitive distortions while presenting them with alternative ways of viewing things to help the client create positive changes in mood and behavior.
Anxiety & Depression
Anxiety and Depression are two of the most common reasons that people seek therapy. Sometimes these feelings are an understandable reaction to difficult circumstances, while other times the feelings linger and become a daily struggle that seems disconnected from the circumstances in a person’s life. Therapy will help the client get to the root of where these feelings of sadness, panic, inadequacy, and fear stem from, helping to address core issues concerning self-worth, identity, and place in the world.
Relationships
Many people seek therapy due to issues surrounding their relationships. Client’s may be struggling with an unhappy romantic relationship they’d like to leave but can’t, conflicts with parents or children, or an unsatisfying dating life that continuously leads to disappointment and heartbreak. Human beings are hard-wired for attachment to others from the moment they are born, and require relationship fulfillment and connection in order to feel safe, happy, and whole. Therapy is uniquely suited to address and work through these issues because it is itself a relationship, making the therapist’s space a safe place to gain insight around negative relationship patterns, conflicts or indecision with or about a romantic partner, or sexual issues.
Couples Counseling
Similarly to individuals, couples can find themselves caught up in repetitive conflict’s stemming from communication issues, resentments, life stressors and other changes that leave the couple feeling alienated from, and misunderstood by each other. Couples therapy seeks to help the clients confront difficult issues they may be avoiding, whether that be disparate life goals, sexual incompatibility, or infidelity. The therapist and the couple work together to define shared goals for the relationship with the intent to remove or work through the barriers to achieve those goals.
The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
- Carl Rogers
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (or OCD’s) are thoughts and/or behaviors that become rigid and repetitive enough to interfere with a person’s life in negative ways. These thoughts and behaviors may have originally been adopted as a way to cope with anxiety, but are only partially successful, thus they begin to take over and negatively impact quality of life. OCD’s include but are not limited to compulsive actions, hypochondriasis, body dysmorphia, and compulsions related to technology, pornography, or social media. A combination of CBT and Psychodynamic Therapy can helps the client address these problematic thoughts or behaviors while also understanding and addressing the root cause of the issue.
LGBTQ+/TGNC Affirmative Therapy
Identifying as an LGBTQ+/TGNC individual within the hetero-/cis-normative society that we live in can result in compound life stressors attached to the physiological, social, and emotional marginalization one experiences in day-to-day life. As a community that historically faces unique barriers to treatment (for example: a lack in adequate resources and inclusive health care literacy and access to quality care from properly trained professionals) finding a therapeutic environment that is not only comfortable and accepting, but also affirmative and supportive, can sometimes be challenging.
At NBPA, LGBTQ+/TGNC Affirmative Therapy is readily available to those who identify within this community. This method of therapy, which focuses on stressors specifically connected with those of queer identities, affirms one’s identity as an integral part of living a balanced life. With LGBTQ+/TGNC clinicians on staff to meet the specific needs of the community, we are proud to provide LGBTQ+/TGNC Affirmative Therapy for queer people, by queer people.
Medication Management
North Brooklyn Psychotherapy Associates does not have any psychiatrists on staff and thus cannot prescribe medication. NBPA therapists do, however, help our clients decide whether a consultation with a psychiatrist is necessary or desired and will make the referral to a psychiatrist in these cases.
