Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in East Hills, NY.

At Transformation Counseling Services each member of our clinical team is exceptionally trained in the application of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Mindfulness for anxiety disorders. Our goal is to help our patients reduce their symptoms and improve in their daily lives. We help our clients learn concrete skills, and current evidence-based practices tailored to their unique needs with special attention paid to racial , social economic, cultural, and spiritual/religious beliefs. If you are ready to live a stress free life please contact us for a free consultation.

Dr. Joel and Dr. Sara work supportively and educatively to help you gain a sense of mastery with respect to your anxiety and stress. For over 40 years, we have helped the victims of abusive relationships, work stress, emotional burnout, identity concerns, & perfectionsitic personalities who partake in unhealthy habits. Clients have often reported a sense of relief and appreciation over being well-understood and accepted by Dr. Joel and Dr. Sara. Our practical and reasonable therapeutic approaches build your healthy self-esteem and provide you with the tools for enhanced growth and effectiveness while facing life's challenges. Often within a few sessions, clients feel better.

I will show you how you make yourself anxious about the things you find threatening and challenging. Anxiety and stress are largely self-created by the beliefs we tacitly hold about adversity or potential adversity. I will show you your self-defeating beliefs and teach you how to think so you feel sensible concern and do what you can do to avoid danger and threats. I will show you how to philosophically accept what cannot be avoided and thereby minimize the stress you feel about what cannot be changed or avoided. Using the power of your own ability to think in a self-helping way I will help you to change your feelings of anxiety.

Feelings of anxiety and stress are the number one reason people seek out therapy with me. We live in a fast paced and solution oriented world. Here in New York these pressures are often multiplied. This can lead to extreme stress and anxiety. With a focus on mindfulness and stress reduction I will use motivating techniques to both give you tools to minimize these feelings as well as ways to mitigate it in the future.

Most of us experience anxiety and/or stress at some point. However, when it persists and reaches a heightened level of intensity, therapy may be needed and can have a powerful impact on reducing these symptoms. Talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy are two approaches shown to have success in treating anxiety. Talk therapy allows for my clients to open up and unburden themselves from the weight of what they may be carrying and validating their experience and emotions. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps address and shift any unhealthy thinking or behaviors associated with the anxiety. This can significantly improve ones ability to manage their anxiety.

Anxiety is excessive worry about negative events that you expect to happen, but are not necessarily in the cards. The worry is enough to bring on dread, panic, obsessions, compulsions, and phobias. Usually, early life experiences – perhaps forgotten or suppressed -- taught you to anticipate the worst. Together, we will bring these memories into consciousness so you can consider if they still apply to you in your current life as an adult. This will help you stay more grounded in the reality of the here and now, which can significantly reduce anxious symptoms. I will also teach you calming techniques, including mindfulness practices and self-compassion to counter anxiety when it arises.

Living with excessive worry and uncontrollable negative thoughts may impede your functioning during the day and keep you up at night. When anxiety impacts your ability to live comfortably, therapy can help. Using CBT and concrete coping skills I’m able to help clients to cope with stress, address specific fears, and alter negative self-talk. I also incorporate psychodynamic insight-oriented interventions, to help clients dive deeper to explore and work through the root of their anxiety. Although anxiety can be overwhelming and debilitating, it’s highly treatable. Together, we can help you work through your worries, and find strategies that help you feel calmer, more at peace, and fulfilled.

Fear is about the past, anxiety is about what we imagine will happen in the future. Fear and Anxiety mean, by definition, that you are not living in the moment. In order to help you identify what is causing you anxiety, the approach is for you to vent what you are feeling and how it is hindering you. I will ask strategic questions that will make you think, behave differently, and take back your life! I will offer you as many approaches to handle your anxiety as you will need to relinquish the hold it has had over you. Stress occurs when we feel out of control. I will help you manage it and even reduce the instances of stress in your life.

We have all had moments of anxiety and we remain anxious due to the beliefs we hold about our reality and the thoughts we have about our situation. An individual becomes anxious when they overestimate the negative aspects of their situation and underestimate their ability to cope and function in problem situations. The anxious individual will imagine and create even more negative consequences than are actually present. I guide my clients to a more rational approach of focusing on the task at hand, not engaging in or imagining negative outcomes, and not engaging in or exaggerating possible negative outcomes. We focus together on ways that enable coping, behavioral change and flourishing in that situation.

Anxiety is the way our minds let us know that something is bothering us. A LOT! When helping you work with your anxiety, I invite anxiety to join us on our journey of discovery; understanding what anxiety is trying to communicate with us and the world. By opening that door, we gain control of the anxiety and can begin lowering symptoms by addressing real life issues that may be causing this uncomfortable feeling within. I have helped anxious clients improve emotional balance, increase feelings of calmness, inner peace, as well as learning how to use anxiety as powerful tool and not a stumbling block.

Anxiety and stress are signals that something is going wrong and you need to make changes. If you feel anxious or stressed ask yourself, " Who or what are you angry at? Or, what are you doing that is painful, without limits and leaves you in a state of Dis-Ease/ Anxious and Stressed? Many times your anxiety can be expressed in panic attacks which are overwhelmed emotions unable to be contained. Psychotherapy will help you to express these pent up emotions and burdens. It will teach you to: be assertive with yourself and others, learn to say "No", relax, set limits, take better care of yourself and learn to use anxiety as your friend and a warning signal that you need to make changes,

We embrace an expansive view of the individual and collaborate with clients to explore how their sense of self, past experiences, environment, and culture, impacts their current moods, relationships, experiences, and self-beliefs. We will work together in identifying what areas of life you would like to further explore to best reach your goals/growth in this process of self-discovery.

Anxiety and stress deplete our energy physically, emotionally, mentally. They can become a whirlwind, swirling around, picking up speed, until you feel exhausted and confused about how to get out of this cycle. They may affect your life and relationships. The body expresses anxiety and tension, often symptomatically and it is through the body that these can be released. My expertise in using Somatic Experiencing, a modality that helps restore balance in the nervous system by noticing sensations, helps to restore wellbeing faster than talk therapy alone. Whether your stress is from the past or related to the present, you'll learn tools to help you regulate and nourish yourself on your own.