About Me
Michael Leibenluft, LMSW
As a licensed psychotherapist in New York, I help individuals and couples work through challenges in their relationships, navigate major life transitions, and find a greater sense of purpose and balance in their professional and creative lives.
Our work together is a collaboration. We’ll use proven therapeutic approaches to help you build self-awareness, compassion, and mindfulness, and growth.
My Specialties
Couples, polycule, and intimate relationship therapy
Gender, sexual identity, and sexual functioning from a Queer, poly, and kink-affirming lens
Exploring and affirming your identity across cultural and social contexts
Navigating grief, loss, family-building, and other major life transitions
Trauma processing and integration
Managing anxiety and feeling “stuck” with practical, effective skills
Finding balance and managing stress for artists, creatives, and other professionals
Availability
I am available for in-person individual and couples therapy in Manhattan, and via telehealth across New York State.
My Approach
Together, we’ll explore how your daily moods, thoughts, and patterns are connected to your past experiences and the world around you.
We'll look at the systems and structures that shape your life—both challenging and empowering—and identify skills and strategies to better navigate them.
I create a therapeutic space guided by a commitment to cultural humility and trauma-informed, Queer-affirming practices; I welcome all political, spiritual, and cultural perspectives. This means that your goals and self-determination are paramount, and we will find the best way to work together based on your preferences and needs. This might include developing practical skills to manage difficult thoughts and emotions (using principles from ACT and DBT), exploring the stories that shape your life (Narrative Therapy), or understanding how early relationships influence your present experience (psychodynamic and attachment-based work).
My Background
I received my Masters in Social Work from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, and I am currently in my second year of training in family and couples therapy at the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP), where I have received training in sex therapy, EFT, Relational Life Therapy, Bowenian Family Systems Therapy, and other approaches.
I transitioned to practicing as a therapist after nearly two decades as a theater director and educator, with a particular focus on cross-cultural exchange and connection through the arts. I run an ongoing theater workshop for immigrant adults that integrates English-language learning and trauma-processing, and I previously served as a mental health counselor in a high school in south Brooklyn supporting immigrant youth. I am fluent in Mandarin and have intermediate Spanish language skills.
Education, Credentials, & Trainings
Masters in Social Work from Hunter College
Second-Year Candidate in the FACTS program at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy
Trainings in sex therapy, harm reduction, psychotherapeutic work and psychedelics, EFT, RLT, ACT, and other modalities and approaches
Masters in Performance Studies from the Shanghai Theater Academy
BA from Yale University
Fluent in Mandarin