“After each session I walked out with a better and more positive perspective on life.”

"I came to Dana Dean at a time when my world seemed to be falling apart around me. Worry, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem seemed to consume my life. I was at my wits end not knowing how to deal with raising my granddaughter with special needs and the added responsibility of care-taking my adult son who has medical disabilities.  I really felt like a failure.  With a genuine heart and deep level of commitment, Dana helped me work through the rough times. She was positive, compassionate, and easy to talk to. She gave me hope and help.  She helped me gain a more positive outlook on myself and the situations in my life.  She had some very refreshing ideas; she really knows her stuff and knows how to listen.  She interacted.  She provided tools and had me really participate in my own healing. Over the 10 months that we worked together on my healing, I looked forward to seeing her each time and gaining her insight.  After each session I walked out with a better and more positive perspective on life.  My life with my granddaughter and son became much more positive and bearable.  I don’t know where I’d be today if I hadn’t had Dana’s help."

“… Dana has the chops to have been a compassionate witness and guide …”

I've worked with Dana for the past three years, and our work together has been a momentous part of my reclaiming my ability to thrive. At long last, I am finally creating a successful life for myself through embodying my empowered creative truth. My work with Dana has absolutely been a key part of my getting to this threshold. In order to be able to stand up in my life, I've had to take on some very frightening demons originating in severe early childhood sexual and emotional trauma that I experienced in my family of origin. Dana has the chops to have been a compassionate witness and guide through what can best be described as a warrior's journey to reclaim my soul. In all honesty, I don't think many therapists would have been able to hang in some of the terrain I've had to traverse along the way, let alone offer me extremely helpful insights at crucial points, as Dana has done so beautifully for me. She has an ability to hold deep space that is rare among people, even among psychotherapists. Together, we have been able to safely overturn some stones buried deep in my psyche and shed healing light on some very tough things inside of me.  In particular, my work with Dana has been game-changing in helping me overcome enslavement to the internal voices of self-loathing, shame and terror that had been pretty much running the show for me for as far back as I can remember. Not every therapist  could have helped me navigate my “basement” as Dana has done with great courage, compassion, professionalism and skill.

Part of what makes Dana's work so powerful and exceptional is the array of unique, cutting-edge therapeutic modalities that she has to offer her clients. We tried out several different ones to help me access more of my inner being, including art therapy and sand tray therapy. What ended up being most effective for me personally was  using puppets and figurines that came to represent different parts of my persona and psyche. We got to affectionately know the cast of characters of my inner life and respect each of their viewpoints and reasons for being. I was able to gain a great deal of extremely helpful understanding about my inner workings through this piece of our work together, which in turn has helped me integrate and learn to manage the various parts of myself that are sometimes in conflict with one another.

Dana definitely has some amazingly helpful offerings in her toolbox to help her clients explore beyond the limitations of rational thought. But I believe that the most powerful offerings by far that Dana brings to her work come from her own being. To say that she is merely an incredibly gifted therapist doesn't do justice to how I have experienced her in my life. I think it's far more accurate to call Dana a gifted healer who uses the medium of psychotherapy to help clients make change (without ever stepping over the professional boundaries of the psychotherapeutic relationship in any way whatsoever). Our work together has facilitated real energetic shifts in my body like no previous therapy had ever done before. What I believe makes Dana such a profoundly effective “psychotherapeutic healer” is the depth of her own being that she brings in the room. She is both intellectually and emotionally brilliant, and I believe that it is through her generous and courageous sharing of her own intuitive gifts that her work is able to help open the deep doors that it can. Dana shows up fully because she really cares. I have experienced Dana as a bona fide spiritual ally in my healing journey, and this is not a term that I ever use lightly.

I could not recommend Dana Dean any more highly as a psychotherapist, particularly to those who truly wish to grow beyond the limitations of trauma to reclaim their self-love and power for real.  

“But, she opens a door, and more takes place within me that I could have imagined.”

 I originally went to therapy to deal with grief, and was referred to Dana after the grief therapist said she could not help with ‘life-long trauma’. Working with Dana allowed me to uncover so much more. I felt for the first time that I was not only heard, I was also appreciated for the strength and courage it takes to continue on.

Dana sees patterns. She exposes truths. She guides gently and with clarity to all those connective tissues that form the whole. She helped me see through the darkness, and there has been so much darkness to get through. She helped me feel hopeful towards a more promising tomorrow.

A number of times before seeing Dana I had thought, “there is nothing I need to say today”. But she opens a door, and more takes place within me than I could have imagined. Dana is one of those transformational individuals in my life. She has caringly worked with me toward creating a life for myself that is more comfortable, more expressive, more reasoned.

I am so very lucky to have been sent her way, as a referral from the grief counselor. As it turned out, the grief was the tip of an iceberg long needing air. And Dana has encouraged me to breathe.