Desirée Reitknecht Somatic Psychotherapist in New Jersey and California

I am a board-certified psychotherapist providing telehealth in California and New Jersey. I specialize in treating anxiety, depression, grief and loss, ADHD, autism spectrum and neurodiversity and relationship challenges.

In the therapy work, we will design a plan forward that includes your specific emotional, physical and mental health needs. Taking into consideration your strengths and unique potential for change, the therapy will explore themes such as your self-narrative, capacity to communicate and the quality of awareness and presence you want to experience in your life.

Applying evidence-based tools and strategies, my treatment approach integrates psychoanalytic relational theory, DBT, AEDP and Somatic embodiment theory and practices. These foundational psychological treatment approaches comprehensively apply cutting edge cognitive and neuroscientific concepts to help inform the path through transformation and an overall sense of dynamic balance and well-being.

You can expect to develop foundational observation skills to enhance self-awareness to improve your inner control of attention which will offer a range of new possibilities and choice points to contribute to your personal development. I will show you how to manage distressing emotions and learn effective strategies for interpersonal communication. By enhancing lateral thinking abilities for creative problem solving and executive functioning planning there are limitless opportunities to create the life you have envisioned for yourself.

I am the mother of three children. As a somatic embodiment enthusiast I seek to explore and map the inner and outer atmospheric dimensions of experience. Someday I endeavor to join the oneironaut ranks to lucid dream with others beings. I obtained my Master's degree at California Institute for Integral Studies, a holistically oriented, progressive university based in San Francisco and I have been licensed 23+ years.

I am currently completing my Ph.D. coursework at California Institute for Integral Studies in the Transformative Studies Department. My research interests include the phenomenological and hermeneutic dimensions of embodiment. I am an avid advocate for subverting human exceptionalism to elevate and advance our ethical responsibility towards harmoniously co-existing with other co-experient creatures and plants inside the earth.

Therapeutic Goals and Intentions

  • Increased capacity to experience and manage multiple affective states and to enjoy the full range of emotion

  • Increased access to multiple aspects of the self without shame

  • Ability to comfort and soothe oneself and to be self-reflective

  • Ability to accept responsibility

  • Ability to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty

  • Ability to be more truthful with oneself

  • Ability to think more creatively and openly about one’s past rather than to continue to repeat it

  • Relief from internal constraints and cognitive inflexibility that have become problematic

  • A more imaginative and creative mind

  • Increase capacity to love and to work

  • Gain self-efficacy

  • To engage in more meaningful and redemptive relationships

  • Instill Hope

Reference: Core Competencies of Relational Psychoanalysis: A Guide to Practice, Study, and Research by Roy Barsness

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

 This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

 

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

 Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

 

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

 Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

 

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

 Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

 

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

 Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life's desire.

 

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

 Soon you will home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

By John O’Donohue