Shani Ben-Dov

Finding a therapist who genuinely understands your background, not just your diagnosis, can make the difference between therapy that feels like going through the motions and therapy that actually moves you.

I'm a bilingual Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP), and Certified in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (C-DBT), fluent in English and Hebrew. I work with adolescents and adults navigating trauma and PTSD, anxiety, depression, grief, relationship challenges, identity, emotional regulation, and major life transitions.

Before private practice, much of my clinical work took place in crisis response, hospital-based care, community mental health, and other high-stress environments. That experience taught me how to sit with difficult things without becoming intimidated by them, while also recognizing that people are far more than the hardest things that have happened to them.

As a therapist, I'm warm, direct, collaborative, and genuinely curious about the person sitting across from me. I don't believe therapy should feel clinical for the sake of sounding clinical, and I don't believe my role is to simply tell you what you should do. I want to understand how you got here: the experiences that shaped you, the patterns you've developed, what those patterns may have helped you survive or manage, and whether they're still serving you now. From there, we can figure out together what you want to keep, what you want to change, and what moving forward can actually look like for you.

I don't believe in a cookie-cutter approach to therapy. The way I work is guided by the person sitting across from me, not by trying to fit every client into the same treatment model. Even with the same person, different sessions may call for different things.

I draw from a range of evidence-based approaches, including CBT, DBT, Motivational Interviewing, and trauma-focused, attachment-based, narrative, strengths-based, and solution-focused work. But the modality is never the point. I don't decide what therapy should look like before you walk into the room. What matters is choosing the approach, intervention, or skill that makes sense for what you need in that moment and what you're working toward overall.

Some sessions may involve challenging a thought pattern or practicing a concrete skill. Others may mean exploring where a response came from, sitting with an emotion instead of immediately trying to change it, examining a relationship dynamic, or making sense of something that hasn't made sense before. We'll pay attention to what's working, what isn't, and what you need from me as we go. Therapy should adapt to you, not require you to adapt to it.

You don't need to walk into your first session knowing exactly what's wrong, what your goals are, or where to begin. Figuring that out can be part of the work we do together.

Our first session is about getting to know you beyond the reason you clicked "book." I'll ask about what's happening now, what brought you to therapy, the experiences and relationships that may be important to understanding you, and what you would want to be different. Sometimes I frame it this way: if I gave you a magic wand and you could picture what you want life to look like on the other side of therapy, what would that look like? From there, we can begin turning that picture into goals that are realistic, meaningful, and attainable.

You can share at your own pace. You won't be expected to unpack your entire life story, or your most difficult experiences, in one sitting. By the end, my goal is for us to have a clearer sense of what you need, where we might begin, and whether working together feels like the right fit. Sessions are available in English or Hebrew, whichever feels more natural.