About Brian

About Brian

I want you to know that I actually care.  Empathically, my office remains non-judgmental and mindful through an approach that prioritizes your personal experience. Healthcare practitioners can feel cold and unsettling.  This is your time, your concerns, and your interests and therefor I have to come from a compassionate stance as you are core to the work.

The first thing we always do is establish an approach that feels right.  We add the consistency, your goals, the clinical knowledge and we plug away. It is my goal to help you be you. When there is no where else to turn we will make sure you have a place in this world.

This isn’t always easy and by offering the space to talk, we can problem solve and find understanding. We learn to tolerate what feels painful. You can learn to break through anxiety that paralyzes your efforts. This can be done, holistically and conscientiously.

Many discover they can do this, truly. I believe you can explore what’s important to you without feeling lost or even making a situation worse. Together we can work through patterns that feel stuck. Change is possible.

This process is about you, your worries, your possibility, strength, and hope.

I began my career in a holistic center, helping people find a connection between self- awareness and emotional pain. I was running a yoga studio and teaching mindfulness through the lens of embodiment – the mind-body connection. With patience, empathy, and empowerment change became very possible in every person I met.

I soon realized that I had the ability to help people change their lives. Each client’s validity, no matter the pain, created an importance in the moment and centered the work I did every day. There was no question, I left a successful career as a young broadway performer and I’ve never looked back. That was nearly 20 years ago!

Inspired by each person I worked with, I created a strong clinical acumen while attending NYU as a graduate student. The value and work of service through psychotherapy took shape and the results while in community agencies and hospitals was inspiring. Doubled with an insatiable appetite to learn evidence based interventions and their implementation further instilled a constant effectiveness. People were beginning treatment and leaving with an empowered sense of self!

I know how to be most effective when in the room, listening, guiding, helping you make change.

After NYU I was hired as a Staff Psychotherapist at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital on the Inpatient, Partial, and IOP levels of care. It is there that it all came together.

Strengthening my expertise and helping people get their lives back in order was my daily task. It was one heck of a strong clinical experience. It was evident the struggles each client was going through and my motivation to be an Eating Disorder Specialist was fueled by working with some of the most advanced and severe situations one can encounter.  I have seen it all, the good, the bad, and the ones who felt hopeless.  You can feel confident that I have helped people heal from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance abuse, and trauma.  I provide Child, Adolescent, Adult, and Family Counseling.

As the only male who is a double board certified eating disorder specialist in New Jersey, I honor the responsibility I have taken on as a national advocate and passionate therapist. I have spoken on issues related to eating disorders across the country.  I have been invited to speak by the International Association for Eating Disorder Professionals, NYC Department of Health, Princeton University, and many other respected institutions as a presenter and trainer.

I always utilize approaches informed by evidence-based practices including DBT, FBT, CBT, ARFID Protocols and Mindfulness. My practice includes multiple avenues of clinical interventions, continued contact with experts in the field and a constant consideration for each person that walks into the office.

My Protocols and Interventions include:

PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPY

Psychodynamic therapy focuses on the conscious and subconscious life that we all experience. The process sheds light on why specific problems repeat by exploring unresolved issues and unconscious feelings. This is what you may be familiar with – talk therapy – in which one talks to find more insight and understanding to their day to day experience.  This theory is helpful to many and can present limited. That is why I bring together therapy and problem solving to help integrate a more tailored experience.

FAMILY BASED TREATMENT: MAUDSLEY APPROACH (FBT)

Often a young adolescent may be so restrictive, over-controlled, rigid, and unable to express what they are going through, thus causing a situation that may feel catastrophic and impossible.  Worse off, when you doesn’t understand why this is happening this approach helps empower you to step in with empath and care and put an immediate help to a potential eating disorder. Family Based Treatment is an approach that gets to the heart of the matter – with adolescents the parents take the control back!  As the most successful evidence based approach in eating disorder care, you can be certain that the parameters and limits required in recovery can be met with the help of this approach.

DIALECTICAL BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (DBT)

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy focuses on behaviors that are utilized when you consistently feel as though tolerating emotions is impossible. You may also not have the ability to express them. I utilize DBT informed interventions with many people. They may struggle with the ability to identify and verbalize emotions. Emotions may often present too intense.  Trust and relationships are in taters.  I am happy to assess your experience and help you find a treatment plan that is informed by DBT to help you gain mastery over the difficulties you have.

DBT offers the learning you may require to allow yourself to remain safe in a structured skill set. You get to experience life.

In addition to practicing the above therapies, I routinely study new and effective techniques in modern therapy, and I would be happy discuss my views and objectives with you.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (CBT)

Cognitive behavioral therapy works to help track and monitor how thinking and mood can influence one another when our defenses are up either consciously or subconsciously.  This allows you to find what is called “automatic core beliefs” and “automatic negative thinking” which often can lead to more understanding and awareness of present moment experiences and offer strong change.  This is all about what the chain of events means to you.  It’s based on the premise that you can overcome an emotion but if you don’t change the behavior you will return. Fears or negative core beliefs are often a part of the experience. The goal is to create a new positive view and challenge the core beliefs over time.

I am a Professional Member of:

• NASW – The National Association of Social Workers
• IAEDP – The International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals

I sit on the Board of: