Featured Therapists:
Every month, PTCNY features our member therapists. This month we’d like to introduce you to:
Modes of Treatment:
Individuals, Couples, Family
Specializations:
Anxiety and Panic Attacks, Career and Work Concerns, Creativity Challenges, Depression, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues, Grief, Separation and Mourning, Interpersonal Issues, Men’s Issues, Multicultural Issues, Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress, Women’s Issues
Therapeutic Modalities:
Creative Arts Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Mindfulness Therapy, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Stress Management
Michelle Schaffner, LCSW-R
Have you been feeling overwhelmed or discouraged? Are you looking for a safe space to explore solutions? I can help you. Together we can use more traditional types of talk therapy and also creative arts techniques to overcome difficult feelings and situations; to develop and maintain more meaningful relationships; and to move forward in your life. By listening closely and engaging in thoughtful and creative exchanges, I will invite you to let go of habits and routines that are not providing the results you want and to become more aware of how you relate to yourself and the world. We will create opportunities for your familiar ways of feeling and thinking to shift into a more satisfying and integrated version of yourself. I will help you identify your strengths and coping skills, strengthen supports available to you, remove obstacles you face, and achieve goals you want to reach.
Modes of Treatment:
Individuals, Couples, Group
Specializations:
LGBTQ, Intersectionality, Racial Trauma, College Mental Health, Depression, Anxiety, Trauma
Therapeutic Modalities:
Individuals, Couples, Group
Aaron Skinner-Spain, LCSW-R, CCTP
I’m a licensed clinical social worker and certified psychoanalyst in the state of New York with over 15 years of experience in the field. I am the Founder and Executive Director of NYC Affirmative Psychotherapy, a community-focused, sliding scale, group psychotherapy practice, and the Co-Director of the Trauma-Informed Clinical Practice Certificate Program at New York University. As an Ivy League graduate, I completed my BA at Cornell University and my MSW at New York University.
My master’ s-level education at New York University included clinical internships in adolescent and young adult mental health. Since then, I have trained at the Training Institute for Mental Health in their four-year program in Psychoanalysis and at New York University Counseling and Wellness Services, where I worked on both their Gender and Trauma Teams.
Some of my postgraduate training includes a one-year program in psychoanalytic supervision, training in cognitive behavior therapy at the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, a certificate in Traumatic Stress Studies from the Trauma Research Foundation, and training in Attachment-Focused EMDR from the Parnell Institute. I have extensive experience working with young adults and adults in the areas of college mental health, trauma, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, LGBTQ affirmative therapy, racial trauma, and entrepreneur and executive stress. I also provide both clinical supervision and private and group practice consultation.
For my work I won the Emerging Leadership Award by the National Association of Social Workers – NYC Chapter and continue to work with organizations to make clinical services more accessible to a wider range of New Yorkers.