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Complex Trauma Treatment Center Long Island
Who we are
Complex Trauma Treatment Center: Long Island is a unified affiliation of specialty psychotherapy practices, with offices in two locations: Manhasset and Huntington. CTTC Long Island is comprised of an expert team of clinicians with decades of experience treating complex traumatic stress and dissociation. CTTC leadership routinely provides clinical trainings across the country, and personally provides or directly supervises all psychotherapy, evaluation and professional consultation services conducted at each location. The Center’s co-directors Dr. Mandy Habib, Psy.D. and Dr. Victor Labruna, Ph.D. are located primarily in Manhasset, and Senior Clinician Keri Schumacher, LCSW, oversees the Huntington practice site.
What we offer
We provide outpatient trauma-focused psychotherapy for youth, adults, couples and families who have been impacted by interpersonal trauma, loss, and other forms of life adversity. While exposure to traumatic events can alter life in significant ways, we recognize that non-trauma based life stressors can also have a profound impact on well-being. Our team of talented clinicians also provides personalized psychotherapeutic approaches for individuals navigating a range of challenges including personal, professional, and relational conflicts and/or adversities. In addition to mental health counseling, we also offer the following specialized services:
- trauma-focused clinical evaluation, including assessment of the impact of traumatic life events and treatment recommendations
- professional consultation on challenging and treatment-resistant cases
- ongoing trauma-focused clinical supervision to multidisciplinary licensed professionals nationwide
- executive coaching, particularly for professionals with histories of trauma
- strengths-based coaching for complex trauma survivors
Our standpoint on trauma
We recognize that exposure to trauma is a pervasive reality. Violence of any kind (including verbal), especially at the hands of someone trusted, can instill a deep and lasting mistrust and hypervigilance in relationships, and profoundly alter a person’s view of themselves, the world, and their place in it. We understand our clients’ struggles through the lens of complex trauma, with the belief that individuals are shaped by their relationships and environment. When those relationships have been fraught with chronic adversity – whether due to maltreatment and neglect, poverty and discrimination, or the legacy of intergenerational trauma – it can alter the course of healthy human development in significant ways.
Emotions, self-worth, behaviors, and overall functioning can be deeply impacted, and relationships, schooling, and occupation may suffer. As a result, goals and dreams, spiritual direction and overall life path can get derailed. We adopt a strength-based perspective in understanding trauma. We firmly believe that many of the “symptoms” that people experience are actually necessary adaptations our clients have made in order to survive. As we help people cope with their traumas, we also honor the resilience of the human spirit, and marvel at the capacity of our clients’ ability to survive, heal, persevere and ultimately thrive despite seemingly overwhelming obstacles.
Contact us
To schedule an initial therapy appointment, request detailed rate information, inquire about specialized evaluation, consultation or supervision services, and for all other general inquiries, please leave a brief initial message including your name and telephone number on our central intake line: (516) 387-6036.
To reach Dr. Habib directly: drmshabib@gmail.com
To reach Dr. Labruna directly: drlabruna@gmail.com
To reach Ms. Schumacher directly: kerischumacher88@gmail.com
Huntington Location:
Keri Schumacher, LCSW
210 E. Main St.
Huntington NY 11743
(631) 372-5681
Manhasset Location:
Mandy Habib, Psy.D., & Victor Labruna, Ph.D.
444 Community Drive
Manhasset NY 11030
(917) 710-7335
(516) 672-3859
Rates and payment options
Cost of a standard 50-minute psychotherapy session is $225/hour. Contact us for a detailed rate schedule for other services.
Payments may be made by cash or check.
We will provide receipts on request to assist clients with Out-of-Network insurance reimbursement, as applicable.
Who we serve
Our clients truly come from all walks of life. Whether we are working with an accomplished professional, a young adult experiencing hopelessness about their future (or no sense of future at all), or someone well into adulthood struggling to find meaning or happiness in relationships or at work, they often have one thing in common: Many of the clients we serve come to our practice having received a number of labels over the course of their lives. Sometimes these labels are in the form of a diagnosis (e.g. bipolar, personality disorder), and sometimes they are judgments or descriptions imposed by themselves or others (e.g. “crazy”, “needy”, “weak”, “explosive”, etc). Our goal is to look beyond the labels. Our goal is to help each individual look at their unique experience (and themselves) through a different lens: a complex trauma lens.
Many of our clients have experienced or witnessed multiple forms of violence, including physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse, neglect, intimate partner violence, exploitation, and chronic or debilitating medical illness. These experiences may have begun early in life, were often chronic or recurring, and frequently increased vulnerability to additional traumas, hardships and struggles that our clients are still contending with today. These experiences often occurred in the context of the home, school or community (such as with bullying or community violence), or at the hand of a family member or other trusted adult and may have been associated with impairment of one’s primary caregivers due to chronic mental illness or substance abuse. They may have been an outgrowth of systemic racial, cultural, sexual or religious oppression.
People who have experienced trauma may exhibit symptoms consistent with many different diagnoses, and therefore are often over-diagnosed or misdiagnosed with seemingly unrelated co-existing conditions, none of which fully captures their experience. Not uncommonly, our clients have been labeled with, and defined by, three, four, or even five psychiatric diagnoses over the course of their lives. Sometimes these diagnoses have been useful in guiding effective treatment. Unfortunately, the diagnoses our clients have been assigned have often been inaccurate or stigmatizing. In the absence of a complex trauma lens, this increases the risk of applying treatment approaches, including medication trials, that are unhelpful.
Here are some of the most common diagnoses assigned to individuals with histories of complex trauma exposure and adaptation:
- Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- Avoidant Personality Disorder (AvPD)
- Bipolar Disorder (BP)
- Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
- Conduct Disorder (CD)
- Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
- Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD)
- Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED)
- Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)
- Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
- Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD)
- Separation Anxiety Disorder (SAD)
Here are two emerging diagnoses that we find useful in capturing many of the symptoms of complex trauma adaptation, but that remain inconsistently recognized and accepted by the mental health system in the United States:
- Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD)
- Development Trauma Disorder (DTD)
Many of our clients struggle with insomnia, gastrointestinal disturbances, anxiety and panic. Some also grapple with serious medical conditions. These often include autoimmune diseases associated with compromised immune system functioning such as fibromyalgia, chronic pain, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus.
Many of the youth and adults that we serve have resorted to extreme measures to cope with or ward off painful memories and emotions or avoid revictimization. These include substance use, self-harm, reactive aggression, food restriction, overeating or hoarding, lying and manipulation, self-sabotage, self-imposed isolation and dissociation. Unfortunately, while many of these maladaptive behaviors may help people cope with difficult situations in the short term, they often sources of rejection and shame and frequently result in additional problems. At CTTC Long Island, we view these behaviors in a different light: as adaptive survival strategies that evolved in the context of chronic and severe victimization, neglect or betrayal. Nevertheless, these intense means of coping almost always end up limiting life choices, impeding daily functioning, and undermining personal wellbeing. They also get in the way of interpersonal connection and intimacy, educational pursuits, vocational performance, and career aspirations.
How we work
Drawing from decades of experience and the latest research, we employ a variety of approaches to provide customized, state-of-the art care that is tailored to meet the unique needs of each client. Treatment often begins with psychoeducation regarding the effects of stress and trauma on the mind, body, and emotions, as well as the identification of triggers. Treatment emphasizes the promotion of healthy attachments and incorporates a range of cognitive and dialectical behavior therapy techniques and mindfulness skills. Cognitive and physiological self-regulatory skills are often introduced to help clients slow down and establish an emotional, behavioral, and cognitive foundation that will optimize learning and skill mastery. The establishment of a positive sense of self, goals for the future, sense of meaning, and the installation of a sense of hopefulness for the future are an integral part of the treatment process.
At CTTC Long Island, we emphasize working in active partnership with our clients to reduce distress, cultivate a healthy mind, body, spirit connection, and develop the capacity to engage meaningfully in present-day life and relationships. Our aim is to build upon an individual’s strengths, bolster self-care efforts, and enhance any medical, religious, community, familial, or twelve-step resources and supports already in place.
Above all, we view the therapeutic relationship as central to the treatment process. Carefully negotiating safety, building rapport and respect, and slowly earning trust are always the top priorities in our work. The pace, focus, and structure of therapy sessions are individually tailored and modified over time based upon the needs, interests and preferences of each client.
We honor and strive to attend to the unique risks, needs, competencies and strengths of everyone we serve. Inclusivity is of the utmost importance in our work, and we approach each session with an openness to learning from our clients, who are and will always be, our greatest teachers.
Treatment models we use
Treatment services at CTTC: Long Island are informed by our extensive personal involvement in leading-edge clinical research on traumatic stress. Humanistic, cognitive, psychodynamic, narrative and relational theories and therapeutic frameworks serve as the foundational underpinnings of our work. Our unique approach to phase-oriented and sequential trauma-focused psychotherapy is to adapt and refine specific evidence-based trauma treatment models and integrate these with innovative, promising practices that are grounded in an understanding of human development, attachment theory, and neuroscience.
Members of our team have developed trauma-focused treatments that are being used nationally, contribute to the research and treatment literature, and routinely provide consultation and training to mental health professionals across the country. Collectively, our team is trained in a range of treatments, including:
- Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP)
- Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
- Trauma Focused – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
*Please Note: Not all treatments are available at all locations
For descriptions of these and other treatment models, as well as extensive information and downloadable resources on complex trauma for providers, consumers, and loved ones, visit www.complextrauma.org.