Justena Kavanagh
LCSW-R, PC, GAL, RLT
Justena brings more than 20 years as a clinician in Manhattan, Madrid, and Miami, working with high performers in high-intensity environments. She is an internationally recognized expert in coercive control, destructive relationship dynamics, and post-traumatic growth. She leads therapy groups for people navigating divorce and estrangement, and transcending intergenerational patterns.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Dartmouth, she worked in management consulting and at ABC News before turning to mental health. She has been a psychology professor at NYU and in Madrid and has served on the Women’s Mental Health Consortium’s executive board since 2011. She founded NYC Counseling Foundation, which supports children and adults through pivotal transitions and educates legal and mental health professionals.
A native New Yorker, Justena has lived, worked, and studied in Paris, London, Germany, and Los Angeles, and now splits her time between New York and Miami. She loves surfing, kitesurfing, wakeboarding, and skiing.
Approach & Values
Seeing how much more successful, connected, and fulfilled we are when they look inward, Justena pursued a mental health career. In 2014, she founded NYC Counseling to assemble an exceptional group of practitioners to help more people reach their potential.
Knowing that society’s markers of success often don’t bring inner contentment, she helps people discover and pursue their true desires and dreams. She believes therapy is the most effective path to profound, lasting change and a life richer in meaning, well-being, and satisfaction. She helps people identify and transcend the behaviors and barriers that hold them back, empowering their journey of self-discovery and fulfillment.
She speaks Spanish and rusty French and German.
Specialties
- Certified in Brainspotting and RLT (Terry Real), Esther Perel trained
- Parenting Coordinator, Family Mediator, and Guardian ad Litem
- Couples, Relationship, and Marital Challenges including:
– Emotional and Financial Abuse
– Premarital, Couples on the Brink, Separation, and Divorce
– Co-parenting through Marriage, Separation, and Divorce
– Betrayal trauma, infidelity, partners of sex addicts - High-Conflict, Coercive Control, and Parent-Child Contact Problems
- High Net Worth, Celebrities, and other High Achievers, their Partners and Adult Children
- Infertility, New Moms, Perinatal, Working Moms, Single Parents
- Partners and Adult Children of Individuals with Addiction or Personality Disorders
- Post-traumatic Growth including Navigating Health Challenges
- Substance Use and Misuse, Behavioral Compulsivity, and Recovery