Meet Caryn & Their Work

Written By UX BEX

My name is Caryn Sherbet (they/them) and I am a licensed psychotherapist based in Brooklyn, New York.

My boundary-expansive approach empowers my clients in overcoming challenges and embracing “otherness”.

I offer unique expertise in treating many conditions of the human experience, including:

  • OCD, anxiety, and/or rumination

  • Chronic illness and/or pain

  • LGBTQ+ Identity

  • Understanding relationship patterns and/or conflict

  • Sexual “dysfunction” and associated experiences

  • Self-conceptualization, meaning-making, and finding purpose

 

My Background

Across my academic and professional career, I have worked with folks in a variety of social work settings. I taught social-emotional skills to young children at elementary schools on the Lower East Side and in Washington, D.C. I reinvestigated wrongful conviction cases and helped refugees gain asylum as a paralegal. I spent several years doing sexual violence prevention work, including attending 100+ hours of sexual violence intervention training and designing the curricula used to train other student advocates. I’m particularly passionate about helping survivors of sexual violence get back in touch with their bodies after trauma.

 

My approach to therapy is warm and challenging.
I pride myself on being a person who gets it while still creating a space in which clients feel safe to explore the scary stuff. The Horrors persist and yet you are not alone in navigating them. 

 

My role as a therapist is
to alchemize a person’s ability to encounter their own unknown and be transformed by it.

In my clinical work, I have found the feeling of “Otherness” to be an almost universal human experience. Rather than turn away from it, I want my clients to face their own otherness head on and learn from it.

 

Call them tenants or core beliefs - these are concepts that come up regularly in my work.

Looking for ourselves, encountering the Other

Many of us assume we “know ourselves” until an experience (a trauma, an inkling of gender dysphoria, hell, even a really good movie) calls forth a part of us that we did not know existed. These experiences can be scary, overwhelming, and, if handled with care, deliciously transformative in discovering who we truly are. My work with clients often orients around the work of Avgi Saketopolou in Sexuality Beyond Consent, where she writes “...the self cannot be fully known… we are always somewhat opaque to ourselves.” Therapy, then, “involve[s] a confrontation with what is irreducibly alien to us about ourselves.” Walking alongside clients as they face their opacity, even in moments of significant overwhelm, is sacred work.

Therapy is not done “to you” but “by you”

We are not meant to hold the enormity of human emotion alone--even the simple act of being witnessed in our emotions can be life-changing. I feel immense gratitude to be both a witness to clients in their rawest moments and to be their trusted partner in change. From me, you can expect rightfully deserved praise and deftly applied pressure to explore that next step of your personal journey. More than just giving yourself the space to process and the opportunity for progress, you are taking ownership of your life and moving toward the reality you desire.

The body remembers what the mind tries to forget

Our bodies hold knowledge that our consciousness cannot, therefore a bottom-up approach (i.e. attending with curiosity to whatever emotions or physical sensations are present in the body, instead of focusing on how one "should" think or feel) is crucial to actual healing and change. 

Pain as a Trauma Signal

In my client sessions I regularly draw from the research of Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and Pain Reprocessing Therapy, which highlights how trauma is often transformed from a somatic to psychological experience and back again.

TV didn’t give you OCD - but it didn’t help either

We live in a culture that is terrified of and disgusted by human emotional experience; many of us are not given a framework in which to understand, let alone feel, our feelings. Things like OCD and anxiety are protective mechanisms that enable us to avoid the terror of feeling.

Understanding obsessive-compulsive thoughts, behaviors and ruminations as environmentally-engineered responses allows us to identify and tackle them. Labeling these responses as “brokenness” or deficiency doesn’t allow us to explore the purpose of these thoughts as your brain’s coping response. My experience with clients provides the safety to understand triggers and interrupt frustrating obsessive-compulsive cycles.

Breaking free from a Greek tragedy

Perhaps my most core perspective is that trying to avoid suffering motivates behavior that almost always ensures it. I believe in supporting clients by enabling them to face their experiences and emotions head on. Together we push past the limitations of your current understanding to explore more expansive perspectives of your condition.

 
 

Let’s Connect!


I’m excited to be working with motivated, curious, and engaged clients who are ready to make changes to their lives in meaningful ways. You can read more about my process and my work before reaching out to connect about your therapy journey - I look forward to being on your team!

A little bit more about the team!

Caryn

(they/them)

  • Queer Jew

  • Aries stellium (I know)

  • Proud leatherdyke

  • Avid baker

  • Devoted cat parent

  • Drag Race enthusiast

Steve

(she/her)

Despite having no clinical training and not paying rent, Steve is an invaluable member of the practice. She specializes in self-advocacy, setting firm boundaries, and practicing self-care. Steve can often be found napping on-camera during sessions.

UX BEX