Licensed Psychologist, #35SI00445200
Dr. Sorger is a licensed clinical psychologist in the states of New York and New Jersey. She received her Ph.D. from Fordham University in 2005, followed by specialty interdisciplinary training in palliative care medicine through a fellowship program at the James J. Peters Dept of VA Medical Center – New York Harbor Geriatric Research Education Center. She has been practicing privately since 2007. She has since studied neurolinguistic programming techniques with Dr. Matt James, and past life regression hypnotherapeutic techniques with Dr. Brian Weiss.
Dr. Sorger’s training at Fordham allowed for exposure to a diverse range of traditional psychotherapeutic theory and symptomatology. Her primary approach includes psychodynamic and relational frameworks (our past relationships and experience guide our current realities). Palliative care medicine is an area of health care that focuses on relieving and preventing the suffering of patients. Palliative care is appropriate for patients in all stages of diseases including both curable, chronic, and those that will result in death. Neurolinguistic programming techniques focus on the nuances of behavior and language to allow for deeper connection to the unconscious sources of our symptomatology. Past life regression therapy utilizes hypnotherapeutic techniques designed to access lessons based in other lifetimes and collective archetypal metaphors (depending upon your religious orientation) in order to help provide comfort and a deeper knowing of our spiritual nature and human limitations and suffering. Whether you believe in reincarnation or not these techniques allow for an interesting and unique approach to feelings of grief and regret.
She has a diverse range of clinical experience with adults (from young to old) including mood (e.g., depression and anxiety) and addictive disorders and behaviors, as well as symptoms resulting from traumatic experiences (including early childhood emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that may manifest into present day conflicts). She has also worked with Veterans of war. Common themes that emerge through such experience include identity and life transitions, existential crises and fear of transformation, life purpose or calling, as well beauty and body challenges.
Given her fellowship training, she has specialized experience working with serious illness, grief resulting from sudden death, suicide, late stage pregnancy loss, and ramifications of abortion. Dr. Sorger views death as a part of life and believes that all endings bring opportunity for new beginnings. She believes that people die as they lived. As a result her practices invite discussion about what dying offers us, whether it is immediate or distant future.
She integrates lifetime psychological challenges and themes into her work with dying patients and their families in order to aid individuals to problem solve around both coping with their illness as well as larger difficulties. She has come to understand that people often cope with illness with the same maladaptive patterns and habits that have led to much psychological and spiritual distress in their lives. Using physical illness, albeit mild or serious, as a gateway symptom to larger themes and meanings in people’s lives allows for information to emerge that allows for levels of deep emotional and spiritual healing. This is true of individual psychological dynamics as well as familial dynamics. She invites open communication and dialogue within people and outside with their families and the world at large.
Living without the people we love may be the greatest of challenges that we experience in a lifetime. Dr. Sorger offers compassion and understands the waxes and wanes of the grief process. She welcomes all stages of grief whether one has lost their loved one or friend yesterday or years ago. Each individual has their recipe for how they deal with the soul that has been lost to them. Dr. Sorger is there to bear witness and offer her expertise no matter how complicated the recipe. Allow your loneliness to dissolve into love as you no longer need to be alone in your grief process.
Grief is based on the relationship in life. Many relationships are often complicated in life resulting in difficulty with the grief process. Individuals often feel that it is difficult to maintain negative and unresolved feelings towards those who have transitioned and passed on. These feelings are resolvable and forgiveness and freedom are possible, in spite of death. Look deeper with Dr. Sorger in order to heal even those relationships that death has brought to an end.
Dr. Sorger invites all symptoms seen as “problems” in her practice. Whether big or small, about death or regarding life all are viewed as keys to the truth that lies within you.