Her Philosophy

Paula is a compassionate, neurodivergent-affirming therapist in NYC, specializing in trauma-focused care. She works with clients from preteens through older adulthood, offering a safe, validating space where individuals can process painful experiences while building practical tools to navigate life’s challenges.

Many clients seek Paula out after not finding success with traditional talk therapy, looking for a deeper, more integrative approach. They often arrive holding a kind of split experience: “I know I’m safe now, but my body doesn’t feel safe,” “I know my partner cares about me, but I still feel anxious and unsure,” or “I know I’m doing enough, but it never feels like enough.”Paula’s work focuses on closing this gap between cognitive understanding and lived, embodied experience; helping clients not just understand something logically, but feel it, trust it, and integrate it at a deeper, nervous-system level.

Her approach to trauma therapy integrates EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and somatic therapy to process trauma at its roots, alongside Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to build practical coping tools. Rather than focusing solely on symptom reduction, Paula helps clients move beyond surface-level relief toward deeper, more sustainable change by shifting the emotional and physiological responses that keep them stuck in painful feelings like guilt, shame, fear, and self-doubt.

As a neurodivergent-affirming therapist, Paula celebrates cognitive and emotional differences, helping clients work with their nervous systems rather than against them. She supports clients in building lives that feel authentic and sustainable, rather than shaped by external expectations. 

Paula’s style is warm, collaborative, and non-judgmental, balancing validation with thoughtful challenge. Her person-centered, strengths-based approach helps clients reconnect with their resilience, values, and sense of agency, and build new ways of relating to themselves and others.

Her Background

Through her work in community mental health settings, in-treatment centers, and private practice, Paula has extensive experience with clients from diverse backgrounds, providing culturally sensitive care that honors each individual's unique experiences. Her experience ranges from providing crisis prevention and intervention to supporting individuals throughout life transitions and challenges. She has worked with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, medical trauma, intimate partner violence/domestic abuse, narcissistic abuse, intergenerational trauma, and disability/race/gender-based discrimination and trauma.