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Anxiety Therapy Clinic of New York

Integrative Approach To:

Anxiety 🌱 Stress 🌱 Depression 🌱 Life Changes

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Your Healing Starts Here 🌱 The Time for Growth Is Now

Masha Leder, LCSW

Psychotherapist
Somatic CBT Practitioner
Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional
Certified Integrative Mental Health Provider

🌱

As an Integrative, Holistic & Person Centered Practitioner, I believe in your innate capacity for change, growth, healing and transformation. I am dedicated to creating a safe, welcoming and non-judgmental container for you to dive deeply and explore how you can nourish, deepen and enhance your mental, emotional, and relational health and wellbeing.

My goal is to support you as you gain deeper insights and understanding of yourself and your loved ones. I am helping individuals struggling with stress, anxiety, and depression reconnect with their true selves, heal emotional wounds, and find lasting peace. My journey with anxiety has given me a deep understanding of what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and, ultimately, to find a way forward. Through my own path to healing, I developed a wide range of practical coping skills that I’m eager to share with you, helping you build a toolkit that works for your unique needs.

My therapeutic approach is culturally informed and trauma sensitive and grounded in a variety of holistic and integrative evidence based modalities including Internal Family Systems, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, Somatic Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Psychodynamic Theory.

I am an LGBTQIA and BIPOC allied practitioner and welcome relational configurations of all types, structures, ages, abilities, backgrounds, cultures, origins, identities, orientations.

Together, we can work toward a greater sense of calm, empowerment, and well-being.

Start Your Journey Toward Relief Today

Anxiety may feel overwhelming, but you don’t have to face it alone. I am here to help you reclaim a sense of balance, calm, and confidence. Reach out today to schedule a consultation, and take the first step toward a more peaceful, empowered life.

What to Expect in Therapy

In your sessions, you’ll have a space to explore, feel heard, and begin using practical tools to manage and reduce anxiety.

I will support you in identifying specific thoughts and physical sensations related to anxiety, help you unearth deeper emotional layers, and guide you in fostering an internal dialogue that supports peace and calm.

We will work together to personalize a treatment plan that suits your needs, respecting the many dimensions of your experience.

My Approach

Our work together will draw on the following therapeutic methods:

Somatic Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Somatic CBT)

Somatic CBT is an evolution of traditional CBT, emphasizing the connection between thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. We focus on helping you identify and reframe thought patterns while integrating practices that support your body’s natural ability to regulate stress. Through mindfulness and somatic exercises, you’ll develop tools to release tension, understand your physical response to anxiety, and create a more stable, grounded experience of your daily life.

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

Anxiety can often feel like an internal tug-of-war. With IFS, we help you understand and harmonize the different "parts" of yourself that may be in conflict—one part of you may feel anxious and hyper-vigilant, while another part is calm and nurturing. By learning to acknowledge, listen to, and integrate these parts, you develop inner cohesion and resilience. Through IFS, you can foster a more compassionate relationship with yourself and create balance in the way you respond to stress.

Integrative/Holistic Mental Health Approach

The Integrative or Holistic Mental Health Approach combines evidence-based practices with complementary methods to support healing on all levels—mind, body, and spirit. This approach views mental health as deeply interconnected with physical and emotional wellness, drawing on mindfulness, nutrition, lifestyle habits, and stress-reduction practices to foster resilience and balance. In our work, we explore factors like sleep, exercise, diet, and emotional processing as integral to mental health. Integrative techniques may include elements from traditional therapy, breathwork, meditation, and body-based practices, all aimed at enhancing self-awareness and whole-person wellness. By creating a personalized treatment plan that values all aspects of your health, we help you achieve a balanced, sustainable path to mental well-being.

Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)

Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) is a short-term, evidence-based approach grounded in attachment theory, designed to help clients understand and regulate their emotions. EFIT focuses on identifying and transforming negative emotional patterns rooted in past experiences, often stemming from relationships with caregivers. Through a structured, supportive framework, clients gain insights into their emotional responses, learning to process emotions in healthier ways and develop a more secure sense of self. By enhancing emotional awareness and reshaping responses, EFIT aims to strengthen resilience, promote self-compassion, and build stronger, more fulfilling relationships with others. This approach can help foster deeper self-acceptance, healing attachment wounds, and empowering clients to navigate life’s challenges with greater confidence.

Psychoanalytic Therapy

Understanding the past can be an important part of healing from anxiety. Psychoanalytic Therapy helps us explore unconscious patterns and unresolved experiences that may be influencing your current feelings of worry or fear. By becoming more aware of these deeper layers, you can gain insight into longstanding habits and responses. Our sessions provide a safe space to bring these elements to light, fostering greater self-understanding and the ability to let go of unhelpful patterns.

From Recent Press on Anxiety

Low choline levels in the brain associated with anxiety disorders

By Lisa Howard

A new study finds the essential nutrient is 8% lower in the brains of people with generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and social anxiety disorder.

People with anxiety disorders have lower levels of choline in their brains, according to research from UC Davis Health.

The study, published in the Nature journal Molecular Psychiatry, analyzed data from 25 studies. The researchers compared the levels of neurometabolites — chemicals produced during brain metabolism — in 370 people with anxiety disorders to 342 people without anxiety.

They found the level of choline — an essential nutrient — was about 8% lower in those with anxiety disorders. The evidence for low choline was especially consistent in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps control thinking, emotions and behavior.

“This is the first meta-analysis to show a chemical pattern in the brain in anxiety disorders,” said Jason Smucny, co-author and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “It suggests nutritional approaches — like appropriate choline supplementation — may help restore brain chemistry and improve outcomes for patients.”

Choline (pronounced KOE lean) is vital for cell membranes and brain functions like memory, mood regulation and muscle control. The body makes a small amount, but most must come from food.

Cycling can reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, strengthen social connections and sharpen cognitive function, study shows

by Megan Huws

A study has found that cycling not only improves physical fitness but also enhances mental well-being, reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression, strengthens social connections, and sharpens cognitive function.

The study, a scoping review of bicycling interventions’ impacts on psychological, social, affective, and cognitive well-being, reviewed 87 studies from 19 countries examining the effects of structured cycling programmes, known as ‘bicycling interventions’, on well-being.

The review found clear benefits for social wellbeing in every study that measured it. It also found positive effects in 67% of studies looking at psychological wellbeing and in 56% of studies looking at emotional wellbeing.

These interventions ranged from one-off sessions on indoor stationary bikes to multi-week outdoor cycling programmes, commuting schemes and mountain biking sessions, all designed to measure how cycling influences mental, emotional and cognitive health.

The researchers found that cycling consistently delivered benefits that include improved “cardiovascular fitness, body composition, and metabolic health, while serving as an effective strategy for exercise promotion and disease prevention.”

Alongside the physical benefits, the study also found substantial mental health benefits. According to the research, cycling is “associated with reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety, improved mood, and enhanced emotional regulation.”

Cycling linked to lower dementia risk and better brain health, researchers find.

The genetics of anxiety: Landmark study highlights risk and resilience

By Lesley Henton

Anxiety disorders — including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and phobias — affect as many as one in four people over the course of their lives. They often begin early in life and persist for years, inflicting significant personal, social and economic consequences.

Now, a major breakthrough published in Nature Genetics is offering the clearest picture yet of the genetic roots of these conditions.

In what is now the largest genome‑wide association study (GWAS) of clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders ever conducted, an international team led by researchers from Texas A&M University, Dalhousie University, King’s College London and Würzburg JMU University analyzed genetic data from 122,341 people diagnosed with major anxiety disorders and 729,881 controls.

The researchers identified 58 independent genetic variants associated with increased anxiety risk that pointed to 66 genes that appear to influence how our brain responds to stress and threat.

“Anxiety disorders and their underlying sources of genetic risk have been understudied compared to other psychiatric conditions, so this study substantially advances this critical knowledge,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Jack Hettema, professor from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Texas A&M University Naresh K. Vashisht College of Medicine. “Anxiety disorders have long been recognized as heritable, but until now we lacked a solid link between anxiety and the specific genetic factors involved.”

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