Alex Kissilenko, LMSW

How we see ourselves often differs from who we truly are. I seek to help individuals, partners, and communities heal through connection, embracing all their identities, and building the courage to lead their most genuine and joyous lives. No matter the nature of your struggles, I hold the firm conviction that everyone has the innate capacity to heal. With a willingness to look inwards and the support of a curious and affirming therapist, your journey becomes so much greater than the sum of its parts.

**About Alex**

As a clinician, my practice is rooted in behavioral, psychodynamic, existential, and experiential approaches. I have extensive clinical experience working with the LGBTQIA+ community and people of diverse backgrounds who are grappling with identity or relationship issues of many kinds. My style is warm, inquisitive, empathic, and versatile to fit my clients’ unique needs.

My strengths lie in synthesizing complex problems and breaking them down into smaller tangible steps. Additionally, I use psychodrama— a tool for bringing therapy into action, with spontaneity, creativity, and humor. We will work together to identify the beliefs, wounds, and patterns that hinder you and transform them into strengths, both on the brain and the body level. I incorporate everything I practice in my own personal life and continuously work towards my own growth as a human being. In the healing arts, I live by the principle that we can only take our clients as far as we have gone ourselves.

**Working with Alex**

My work is driven by my values and a commitment to authenticity, integrity, and liberation, including racial justice, queer and trans liberation, body neutrality/positivity, sex positivity, kink, BDSM, sex work, polyamory/ENM, and reproductive justice. I utilize a harm reduction and non-pathologizing approach, meaning I take a deeply nonjudgmental perspective to everything clients bring to therapy and hold space for the multitudes of self we all contain. I also take great responsibility in co-creating a safe space for clients to experience vulnerability, as well as continuously examine any power dynamics impacting our work inside and outside the therapy space.

**Specialty**

I specialize in working with gender, sexuality, LGBTQIA+ people, kink, BDSM, poly/non-monogamy, relationship issues, and trauma. I treat co-occuring conditions such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse, suicidality, and self-harm. I enjoy working with individuals who may be struggling to fully embrace and integrate all parts of their identity into a cohesive sense of self. This may include aspects of identity that are more interpersonal such as: role-based conflicts, race, ethnicity, culture, spirituality, religion, etc. This also includes more intrapersonal aspects of identity like self-image, self-esteem, self-awareness, self-actualization, life transitions, loss of self, identity crises, and dissociative identity.

Education, Training, and Certifications

Master of Social Work from New York University Silver School of Social Work

Licensed Health Coach from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition

Certified Yoga Instructor

Trainings from various institutes in:

DBT, CBT, Attachment-Based Family Therapy,The Gottman Method of Couples Therapy, Psychodrama & Sociometry, Trauma-Informed Practices, Sex Therapy, Teledrama and IFS