Dana Brownstein is a Licensed Psychoanalyst who works with patients in person in her West Village office, or through a web-based app.  She provides a supportive, peaceful, safe environment for patients to explore their current pain points and past traumas. She reflects on her clients’ pasts with curiosity, patience, benevolence and humor.  She uses both psychodynamic approaches and EMDR.

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Dana generally works with high-functioning accomplished adults and college students who suffer from anxiety, depression, and trauma-related discomfort.  Her clients include, but are not limited to, Asian immigrants (including “parachute kids”), and adult survivors of childhood trauma.  Although her clients have generally achieved success and stability through their careers and academic accomplishments, many have become consumed by an achievement-based checklist mentality and goals of perfection.  In this process, they have become alienated from their need for connectedness and authentic relationships.  This alienation commonly expresses itself as free-floating anxiety, and/or troubling interpersonal relationships (such as unsatisfying romantic relationships, toxic friendships, or workplace conflict).   The roots of these experiences are often found in maladaptive coping mechanisms that worked for her clients earlier in life but limit them in the present.  

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Dana uses her trauma training to work with her clients to identify triggers for their anxiety and panic, and to develop strategies for experiencing them less painfully.  She helps her clients reflect on their interpersonal relationships, focusing on how clients unconsciously cultivate relationships into re-enactments of painful earlier experiences.  She also guides clients through the exploration of their relationships with themselves, identifying negative self-talk and self-sabotaging behaviors that hold them back from achieving their goals and experiencing profound satisfaction.  Further, Dana (who is also a Human Resources professional), coachs patients through workplace conflicts/conflict resolution, communication roadblocks, and time management challenges.  Bringing these various elements together, Dana guides her patients to live a life that is more satisfying and meaningful.