Trauma therapy in New York City

Margaret Shanley, lcsw

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I want you to know you’re not alone, and regardless of your story, healing is possible.

I’m here to help you unwind the impacts of trauma in your life so you can live the life you want.

Trauma impairs your physical, emotional, and mental well-being. It causes physical changes in your brain, wiring you to become distressed and perceive danger everywhere around you. It wreaks havoc on your relationships, makes everyday activities a struggle, and keeps your nervous system in a state of chronic fight-or-flight mode.

But just like your brain became wired toward a state of nervous system dysregulation, it can become wired for safety, calm, and healthy regulation again.

Through trauma therapy, you can learn to:

  • Regulate challenging emotions and become calmer in your body

  • Feel empowered to grow and take control of your life

  • Overcome chronic anxiety, depression, and shame

  • Cultivate self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-worth

  • Maintain secure, loving relationships

  • Set healthy boundaries and stop people-pleasing

  • Create a more sustainable and nourishing work-life balance

  • Trust and accept yourself on a deeper level

When you work with me, I’ll create a safe space for you to feel seen, heard, celebrated, and nurtured.

I’ll meet you wherever you’re at to help you feel stable in your body and life. I’ll support you through difficult situations, emotions, and experiences. And together, we’ll create lasting change so you can heal and flourish.

My approach to trauma therapy

I believe that trauma therapy, like all therapy, should be a reflection of the needs and desires of the client. I believe that one type of therapy does not fit all and all do not fit one. In other words, our sessions will always tailored to you and your experiences, needs, and goals.

My therapeutic style is empathetic, nonjudgmental, and direct. I will never judge or shame you for your life experiences or the topics you bring to sessions. I will, however, gently point out and hold you accountable for the patterns and habits that are keeping you stuck. My goal is to help each person I work with feel seen, heard, and understood.

In order to meet you where you’re at, I integrate a variety of therapeutic modalities in my practice. These include psychotherapy (including cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR).

  • Psychotherapy is an umbrella term for any style of talk therapy that helps you work through and change difficult patterns, situations, and behaviors in your life. It involves thinking about and working through your unique challenges in supportive and practical ways. This includes providing you with helpful concepts, worksheets, and additional resource recommendations.

    I will never tell you what to feel or how to think, but rather help guide you toward a deeper understanding of yourself. Within talk therapy, I often use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT).

  • Trauma-informed care (TIC) is an approach that recognizes the symptoms, signs and risks of trauma and enhances services with a healing orientation.

    TIC aims to provide a physically and emotionally safe environment, using a strengths-based structure for recovery in order to not re-traumatize the client. The importance is placed on responding to the effects of trauma at all stages.

  • CBT helps you change the way you think about and respond to stressors in your life by focusing on the things you have control over. You learn specific skills and strategies for coping with difficult emotions, how to reframe troubling thoughts and feelings, and how to choose healthy behaviors over habitual ones. CBT is the gold standard for ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, sleeping problems, and more.

  • DBT utilizes mindfulness practices to help people who are struggling with overwhelming negative thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Skills learned through DBT include somatic safety, emotion regulation, and self-soothing for intense fear, overwhelm, or pain.

  • EMDR is an evidence-based therapy that engages healing processes in the brain via eye movements, tapping motions, or alternating sounds in the ears. By helping the brain safely process and store traumatic memories, EMDR can greatly diminish trauma symptoms, including mental health challenges such as negative self-beliefs, depression, and anxiety.

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