ABOUT ME
I began my career as a trauma-focused Art Therapist in 2009.
Like many people who train as psychotherapists, I came to trauma work driven by my experiences as a survivor. Artistic expression was an essential part of my own healing, and I wanted to facilitate this for others.
When I began to pursue my Masters degree in Art Therapy, I quickly learned that in order to do this work well, and meaningfully, I would need to take my own process of trauma recovery to greater and greater depths.
“We cannot guide others to places we have not traveled”
I spent the early years working with children and families. My longstanding spiritual practice, especially that of energy, was always an influence in my work. But I wanted to fully educate myself on the different approaches to mental health care, and assemble a wide range of tools to benefit those working with me. These techniques include CBT, Trauma-Focused CBT, Motivational Interviewing, Chairwork, Play Therapy, Integrative Mental Health and Addictions training, Family Systems, Couples Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Psychodynamic and relational theory, and dreamwork.
When I started my private practice, my work organically shifted towards working with other LGBTQIA+ adults (and their inner children).
In 2014 and 2017 I had two serious accidents that resulted in almost the exact same injury to each arm. I acquired a moderate disability and nerve pain. This was a turning point where I personally began to examine the limitations of psychotherapy in working with more chronic experiences.
I struggled with the idea of a recovery process that would never end, because while I was permanently impacted, the injury had healed.
I began to discern between healing as an attempt to return to who I was, and healing as a process of learning to incorporate what had changed and continue to move forward.
I began to challenge some of the beliefs I had about who I was, and who I was supposed to be. And I opened my mind to ideas of identity that were flexible enough to hold the ways I had changed and would continue to change.
I contemplated my identity as being more than my body, more than my experiences, and more than my current circumstances. While I always considered myself an eclectic therapist, I was increasingly drawn towards incorporating approaches that oriented to the body, the transpersonal, and our ability to move through layers of consciousness.
This fundamentally changed the way I thought about trauma recovery.
“Healing has many endings, and many beginnings”
Through my practices of Reiki, Breathwork, Hypnosis, Yoga Nidra, and Tantric Meditation I began to develop an integrated system of how to use energy awareness, states of consciousness, and belief restructuring to support my ongoing recovery. I reconnected more deeply to my spiritual center and began to develop my intuitive and mediumship capabilities to deepen my energy practice. I sought further professional training in these modalities to offer them responsibly to others.
These techniques gradually changed my approach to psychotherapy, and I witnessed incredible transformations in others. I have described this style as Reiki-informed Psychotherapy. I also teach and facilitate therapeutic groups focused on energy healing, trancework, and meditation, along with individual sessions for holistic support.
There are times when psychotherapy is exactly what is needed, and that level of individual attention and focus allows for potent insight and healing to unfold.
And there are also times when you “know enough” about your personality, your experiences, and your emotional patterns. You may begin to reach the limits of what insight can offer, and feel the tension between what you have learned and how you experience day-to-day life. At this point you may wish to cultivate practices that support ongoing integration, that live in your body, and can be practiced independently.
Keep reading to learn more:
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Learn about my training and certifications, and what a liberation-focused perspective means to me:
Mikella (she/they) is a licensed Creative Arts Therapist, Board Certified Art Therapist, Hypnosis practitioner, Breathwork Facilitator, Medium, Reiki Master Teacher, and 13th Octave LaHoChi Master living and working on occupied Lenape land currently known as NYC. She has a passion for helping individuals to recognize and cultivate their innate strengths, and to promote healing through mindful practices, insight, play and creative process. After graduating from New York University she worked in a variety of community-based, outpatient, acute care, and residential settings allowing her to develop expertise with diverse populations including children. Her focus in her private psychotherapy practice was providing LGBTQIA2+ affirming, and trauma-informed healing care for adults. Through over ten years of trauma-focused therapy she has found that many are in need of more flexible options for therapeutic support that have an expansive use of different practices to support healing. She also wishes to offer support to those who are further along in their healing journey and may have started to encounter the limits of ongoing psychotherapy.
As a foundational aspect of her work, Mikella actively engages in examining the ways that white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and colonization manifest not only in our lived experiences, but how this can infiltrate the systems of mental health and wellness. She holds the awareness of her impact in working with people with different identity locations, and for those who are comfortable working with a white practitioner she maintains a humbled commitment to integrating anti-racist practice into all aspects of this work to the best of her capacity. This includes thoughtfully considering the role of culturally appropriate practices and cultural honoring within holistic work, acknowledging their origins. Endeavoring to approach holistic modalities from a liberation-focused perspective means both acknowledging these systems and their impacts AND radical imagining of futures where we can all be free. As a healing arts practitioner this work sits in a particular lane of support to find greater resource and connection to support the tangible ways we must cocreate a better world.
Training and experience: Mikella has a Master's degree in Art Therapy from New York University and a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts. She was a consultant and supervisor with Sanctuary for Families (a leading multi-service agency for survivors of gender based violence and human trafficking), and was the lead supervisor and coordinator for the Art Therapy internship program at East End Hospice (for their therapeutic bereavement camp for children) from 2014-2020. Mikella has been a guest lecturer with New York University's Art Therapy program and Silver School of Social Work, and has presented professionally for numerous organizations in New York City including the McSilver Institute for Poverty, Policy & Research, Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, the Expressive Arts Therapy Summit, the NYC Mayor's Office to Combat Domestic Violence, and offered post-graduate continuing education with Dancing Dialogue. She has obtained additional training in Couples Therapy at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy. In 2017 and 2018 she pursued Reiki Master Training, Breathwork, Dreamwork, Ericksonian Hypnosis, Integrative Hypnosis, and Integrative Coaching. She has also trained with Jordan Deer Heart Ix Mazatl Ol-Si to be a 13th Octave LaHoChi Master. Mikella has developed a unique style of blending different modalities to create a dynamic approach to healing work that works on the levels of the mind, body, and spirit. She continues to offer formal training and supervision to psychotherapists.
Publications:
Exploring Gender Identity and Sexuality through Mixed Media and Portraiture, in Creative Arts Therapies and the LGBTQ Community, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019.
Embodiment and the Transpersonal, in M. DeBethune, K. Linhardt, and V. Koutmina (ed.) The Embodied Art Therapist. New York, NY: Routledge , (in press 2026)