Leah Cerf, LMSW

If you're feeling lost, you came to the right place. Our work together will help you uncover and reconnect with the inner resources and strengths you already possess. Through our sessions, you'll gain insight into what’s getting in your way—so you can restore balance, harmony, and health to your life. My style is warm, non-judgmental, and highly interactive; no subject, thought, or emotion is off limits, and humor is welcome. I bring a non-pathologizing, strengths-based approach to therapy that affirms your experiences and identity, while also honoring the broader social and political context in which you live. Together, we’ll build self-awareness, emotional flexibility, and psychological resilience. Our work will be a source of consistent source of support to help you identify distorted thinking, modify limiting beliefs, transform behavior, and ultimately relate to yourself and others in a more integrated, authentic, and fulfilling way.

I work with adults and teens navigating relationship and attachment challenges, dating issues, life transitions, anxiety, burnout, depression, chronic nervous system dysregulation (often felt as persistent "fight or flight" or anxious thought spirals), identity formation, family dysfunction, intergenerational trauma, and chronic somatic or emotional distress. Whether you're feeling stuck in old patterns or searching for a deeper sense of self, our work can help you move forward in a way that’s aligned with your values and vision.

My integrative approach draws on evidence-based modalities like psychodynamic psychotherapy, attachment-based therapy, CBT, EMDR, DBT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based stress reduction, and somatic techniques. I specialize in helping people gain insight into how the past has shaped them, shift what’s no longer working, and release what no longer serves them. I am also trained in EMDR, a powerful, evidence-based therapy that helps people process and heal from past experiences or trauma by reducing the emotional intensity of distressing experiences, so they no longer feel stuck or overwhelmed by them. I'm also certified in ELDOA—a unique myofascial technique aimed at improving nervous system regulation and communication, fascia health, spinal decompression, and chronic tension. My background includes a clinical education from Columbia and training at the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy, where I studied mind-body integration methods, including guided imagery to help clients repattern emotional blueprints and open up new possibilities for growth.

In addition to my clinical work, I’m also a visual artist and have led retreats for individuals coping with burnout and vicarious trauma. I bring this creative and restorative lens to my work with clients, always holding space for the whole person—mind, body, and spirit. I meet each person where they are and integrate whatever best serves them at this particular moment of their life to provide relief, self-compassion, inner insight and change.