Therapy and Consulting for Illness, Caregiving, and Loss
Helping People Cope with the Impacts of Medical Issues
Why Specialized Therapy for Illness, Caregiving & Loss?
While illness and grief are universal, our own unique experiences drive how we understand them, what patterns and meaning we recognize within them, and how we integrate them into the rest of our lives.
Whether your “new normal” is an illness, caregiving or bereavement, or working in healthcare during the pandemic, you have a lot to wrap your head around. The impacts on how you feel, how you act, and how you relate can be immense. Navigating these existential, practical, and emotional experiences demands courage and sensitivity at moments when you may already be feeling overwhelmed.
While family and friends often try to help, many people find that specialized trauma-informed therapy offers a level of additional support during challenging times. Our goal is to bring you a warm, flexible, non-judgmental space informed by extensive experience in healthcare and the latest in evidence-based approaches to help you cope and heal.
Mourning is more than the stages of grief and chronic illness is more than just being sick.
Our Specialties
Bearing Witness & Caregiving
When someone important to you is sick, your life can change. For some, bearing witness to illness brings long-standing, difficult relationship patterns to the forefront, and for others, the logistical and emotional demands of caregiving can overwhelm, isolate and exhaust. For many, the vulnerability felt in considering one’s own mortality can leave us grappling with how to make sense of our lives now.
Living with Serious Illness
Living with chronic, life-threatening or terminal illnesses presents unique challenges, with changes in roles and abilities, struggles with hope, fears about the future, communication with family, friends and medical providers, chronic pain and fatigue, and complex healthcare systems to navigate in decision-making. We have specific expertise in helping people adapt to and navigate the emotional, familial and logistical demands of serious illness.
After a Death or Loss
There is nothing quite like losing someone important to you, whether due to illness, accident or other causes. Many people find themselves unsure of how to cope, particularly when the relationship or cause of death was complex. While everyone experiences losses, your experience is unique to what you’ve been through, to who you are and to what matters to you. Processing your experience with a trained clinician can help you heal, integrate the loss and figure out what comes next.
Healthcare Professionals
Working with those who are ill and with their families can be both immensely rewarding and an ongoing challenge to stay emotionally invested. Burnout, compassion fatigue and demoralization can make people check out or leave the field. Many professionals find that with the right support, they can find sustainable, gratifying connection to their work.
Training, Workshops, & Presentations
We work with non-profits and academic and medical centers seeking additional training for their staff on specialist topics relating to grief, trauma, working with serious illness and caregiving, and clinician burnout and death anxiety.
Consulting
Consulting is available for individuals or organizations looking to implement more evidence-based practice in grief, trauma, serious illness and clinician coping, into the development of their clinical work and programming. For more information, and a list of organizations we have worked with previously, please click here.
Meet the Owner and President
Dr. Abigail Nathanson, LCSW, APHSW-C, ACS
Abby (she/hers) is a New York City-based licensed trauma therapist, board-certified palliative social worker and co-editor of the forthcoming book “The Practice of Clinical Social Work in Healthcare” from Springer Press.
My Practice is LGBTQIA+ Allied and Trauma-informed
As Quoted In:
In the Media
Hear Dr. Nathanson on NPR’s Weekend Edition, speaking about COVID Survivor’s Guilt
Fees & Insurance
Check your Insurance
Like many specialists in New York City, Dr. Abigail Nathanson and her team work as "out of network" providers and will provide you with monthly superbills that you can submit to your insurance company for reimbursement.
Ask your insurance about your "out-of-network mental health benefits" by calling the member number on the back of your card, and asking the questions found here.
*Please Note - Medicare does not have out of network coverage for mental health.
Receive Superbill
Make sure you are properly submitting your “Superbill.” It contains a list of services rendered in a given month, amount paid, provider license and NPI, as well as location and diagnosis codes. It will be emailed to you monthly, and can be accessed from your secure client portal at any time.
Submit to Insurance
Your insurance company will let you know the best way to submit your superbill and claims- sometimes there is a separate form from the insurance company, and sometimes the superbill is enough. Many patients with out-of-network coverage find that 50-80% of their bills are covered after deductible, and that they are reimbursed 4-8 weeks from submission.
Let’s Talk
Your first 15-minute consultation is free.