Life is not a neat package. I am here to help you unpack it, keep track of it all, get rid of some of it, and keep some safe. Whether the struggle shows up as overthinking, sadness, people-pleasing, loneliness, irritability, or burnout, the common thread tends to be that something needs to shift. At the core of my approach is the establishment of a trustworthy, unbiased space. One of the trauma areas I specialize in is childhood trauma, and women's issues.
You'll be describing something from years ago, something you've explained away the same way a hundred times, and partway through saying it, it sounds different out loud than it does in your head.
Nothing about the story changed. Saying something to someone who's actually listening isn't the same as thinking it to yourself for twenty years.
A lot of people come to me because of anxiety, depression, or just being tired all the time, not because they think they have unresolved trauma. Often, that's exactly what's underneath it.
Many of the people I work with are doing well by almost every visible measure: advanced degrees, demanding careers, real accomplishments. They've also spent a long time treating their own exhaustion as a personal failure rather than as information. That's usually where the work starts.
My practice is for women and nonbinary clients, with a particular specialty in women's issues.
I'm Caroline, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over 10 years of clinical experience, based in Lower Manhattan, working with women and nonbinary clients on trauma, anxiety, depression, attachment, and burnout. My approach blends EMDR, parts work (IFS), CBT, DBT, ACT, and psychodynamic and psychoanalytic work, always built on the relationship between us.
I hold a Master of Social Work alongside a graduate certificate in Women's and Gender Studies, and my undergraduate work centered on sociology. Before becoming a therapist I was a registered yoga teacher, and I carry a background in surfing, music, and art into how I think about the body, creativity, and what it means to be a full person outside of a diagnosis.
You can describe your own patterns with real precision, probably better than I can, but explaining a pattern and actually feeling your way through it are two different things, and you already know that, which is its own kind of frustrating. Life isn't a neat package, and I'm not interested in pretending it is. My job is to help you unpack it: keep track of what matters, get rid of what doesn't, and protect what needs protecting.
On rest
Rest doesn't feel like rest. It feels like getting away with something, or like the floor might drop out if you stop moving long enough to notice.
On milestones
There's also the version where you got the thing: the degree, the promotion, the relationship. The relief you were sure would come with it never quite showed up, or showed up and didn't stay. So now there's a new thing you're aiming at, with the same quiet assumption that this next one will finally be the one that works.
Sometimes it's a life transition that brings people in: a breakup, a job change, a move, a milestone that looks like success from the outside but feels disorienting from the inside. Transitions have a way of surfacing what was already there.
On history
You've wondered, "something is wrong with me," because there's no single dramatic story, just years of being the capable one, the one who didn't need much, the one everyone else came to for advice. Some people have buried it in work. Some people have buried it in making things. Some people have buried it in people-pleasing. Either way, it tends to catch up.
On EMDR & attachment
"Some things don't resolve just because you understand them."
My approach is relationship-first, built on creating a space that's genuinely trustworthy and unbiased before anything else. Before we do any "technique," I want to actually know you: your history, your defenses, the parts of you that are doing their best to keep you safe. I'm just as interested in who you are as a person as I am in what brought you in (what you're proud of, what already feels solid, what makes you laugh) because this is less about what's "wrong" with you and more about what's happened, and how that still shapes the way you work, love, and rest. There's room here for humor, contradiction, and not having it all figured out.
Trust isn't a formality before the real work starts; it is the work, especially for people whose early attachment experiences taught them that closeness wasn't reliable. There's an idea I come back to often, one Thich Nhat Hanh has written about: when a plant isn't thriving, you don't blame the plant, you ask what it needs. People aren't so different.
From there, I'm not loyal to one method over another. Some weeks that looks like EMDR: working through specific memories or recent events your body hasn't let go of, whether that's something from years ago or something that just happened. Some weeks it's parts work (Internal Family Systems, or IFS), getting curious about the part of you that intellectualizes or self-protects, rather than trying to talk yourself out of it. Sometimes it's more concrete than that: CBT, DBT, or ACT skills. Underneath all of it is something slower, more psychodynamic and psychoanalytic: understanding why these patterns formed in the first place, and building a relationship steady enough that insight can actually turn into change, instead of becoming one more thing you've figured out about yourself and filed away.
I'm not dogmatic about method. I'm dogmatic about the relationship being the thing that makes any of it work.
Billing insurance means giving you a diagnosis that goes into a permanent claims record, and means a reviewer who's never met you can audit our sessions and decide whether your care still counts as "necessary." That's not how I want your care directed.
It also means session length isn't capped at 45 to 53 minutes the way insurance requires. I offer 60, 90, and two-hour sessions, for when things are just starting to open up.
In-person sessions in Lower Manhattan; everything else is virtual. Licensed to work with you by telehealth in six states.
Sessions
In-person in Lower Manhattan, twice-weekly availability, or virtual: 60, 90, or 120-minute sessions.
Who I work with
Women and nonbinary clients, with a specialty in women's issues.
Licensed in
Virginia (Manassas & Northern Virginia), New York (NYC & Brooklyn), Connecticut, Maine (including Portland), Utah, and Hawaii.
Why we start with a consultation: it's not a sales call. This work is built almost entirely on the relationship between us, so it matters as much to me that I'm the right fit for you as it does that you're looking for what I offer. If it's not a fit on either side, I'll say so, and I'm glad to point you toward someone who might be.
