I believe meaningful healing is only possible when we can bring 100% of our authentic self into a space. I created RISE to be that space.
When basic freedoms are threatened, therapy must empower folks not only to transform internal dynamics that cause suffering, but also to transcend societal structures that fail to honor the full spectrum of humanity. For me, being an effective clinician has always meant being an activist and advocate - aware of, and engaged with larger struggles that impact clients, their families, and their communities.
Together, let’s discover, strengthen, and delight in your most authentic, expansive self, and create the world you deserve, within and around you.
Start Your Revolution
RISE Services
I am an Clinical Psychologist with 20 years experience, available for virtual sessions to 42 US States through my PsyPact certification, or at my cozy, central New Jersey office. Whether in the comfort of your own home, or in person, therapy should be a place of refuge - a time when you can be fully, openly, and unapologetically you. Many clients come to RISE because they haven’t felt fully able to open up elsewhere, while others come seeking to explore who they are more fully. Still others are seeking to empower themselves to live more authentically out in the world and create the life that allows them to do. You have so much more to offer to yourself than you realize. Let’s unleash that potential and build on the most important relationship in your life. The one with yourself! Click “learn more” for information about how therapy works, some of my specialties, and my individually tailored approach.
Relationship Therapy
In individual therapy, the trusting relationship we form with our therapist becomes a tool to improve our connection with ourself. However, so much of our lives happen in relationships with others, outside of therapy. These connections are a part of all human experience, and yet communication can feel so daunting. Relationship therapy is like having a communication coach guiding you through conflict and challenges while you practice deeper, more skillful, more grounded ways of interacting. While we often hear about couples therapy, relationship therapy can assist all kinds of family, chosen family and partner pairs and groups.
Gender and Sexuality
In a society where some identities and human experiences are seen as more optimal than others, understanding and inhabiting identities outside those definitions can require extra support. The range of human experience of gender and sexuality is incredibly vast, including a wide spectrum of gender identities and expressions, and biological realities. Sexual desire and attraction can take almost limitless forms, toward certain gender identities and/or expressions, specific power dynamics or roles, and in varied relationship structures and forms. Still others do not experience sexuality, or experience it only in very specific ways. Let’s move beyond narrow expectations and definitions and begin an exploration of who you are and what you need to thrive.
RISE Services Continued…
It is a particularly scary time for families to navigate having a gender diverse child. Parents have so many questions when a child or teen comes out as transgender, non-binary, or just expresses gender questioning.
-Where is this coming from?
-How do I know this will last?
-How can I possibly know what’s real in this media environment?
-How can I best help my child?
-How can I balance caution with affirmation?
-Where can I get my questions answered? My child is using words I don’t even know.
-Will my child be safe?
-Will we have to move somewhere safer?
-Will I be judged if I have negative feelings about this?
In my specially designed family-youth gender evaluations, all these questions and any others families may have are answered in depth. I meet with parents and youth separately over the course of 4 to 6 sessions. I very carefully and thoroughly evaluate the type and extent of gender dysphoria, incongruence, and anything else that might be going on with a youth’s mental health. In the final session, I provide the family with detailed feedback, make sure all their questions are answered, and provide detailed recommendations about what services would best meet the child’s needs.
Family-Youth Gender Evaluations
If you are seeking medical care to treat gender dysphoria, chances are you have already spent countless hours researching your options and thinking this decision over carefully. Research shows most folks who seek this medical care have been experiencing gender dysphoria for years and years.
In my experience, a client is the expert on their own experience of gender and what is medically necessary to treat dysphoria. My goal is to be able to provide a thorough, scientific rationale to assist you in obtaining medical care and insurance coverage through an affirming process based on your informed consent. I have worked with hundreds of clients who have sought gender related medical care and have engaged with many of the local providers as well as providers around the country.
If you have any lingering questions about the nature of your dysphoria, what treatments will most help, or just natural fears or reservations about your care, I am a safe person with whom to talk over these decisions who has seen many folks through this process.
Adult Surgical and Medical Evaluations
As an expert in sex and gender diversity, and an LGBTQ+ activist and advocate, I am frequently sought after in a variety of settings for consulting and training, as well as speaking engagements. The following is list of some of the services I have offered in the past:
-Trainings and seminars for mental health and medical professionals at conferences, grand rounds, for continuing education and in group practice settings.
-Trainings, continuing education, and consulting in K through 12 and higher education settings for educators, staff, mental health providers, and students.
-Expert testimony, consulting and training in legal settings.
-Policy consulting as well as crisis management and counseling in educational, government, and business settings.
-Consulting and executive coaching relating to best practices and cultural competence with LGBTQ+ policies, creating affirming work places, and managing divisive beliefs.
-Psychoeducational presentations and programs in diverse workplace settings at all levels.
-Individual and group supervision for therapists in private practice, group practices, at college counseling centers, and for graduate students.
Click “Learn more” to learn more about my experience and offerings.
Consulting, Speaking, Training and Supervision
DR
Dr. Del Sasso, PsyD, has over 20 years experience. Del has frequently works with individuals and families not traditionally supported in therapeutic spaces, and with groups that have complicated histories with the mental health establishment. This includes LGBTQ+, racially diverse, and neurodiverse folks, artists and activists, and those with non-traditional relationship and family structures. Del views individual differences and symptoms not as pathologies, but as important data about who you’ve been, who you are, and who you are meant to be. Del strives to offer individualized, affirming, empowering treatment using techniques and tools tailored to YOUR needs, to help you discover and reach YOUR very unique goals.
Is RISE right for me?
Making the vulnerable choice to come to therapy is hard enough without wondering if your identity, lifestyle, family structure, neurodiversity, background, or anything else about you will be understood. Explaining your history and needs to a stranger is daunting enough without having to explain your political reality. Dr. Del is already out there in the community, fights tirelessly for marginalized folks, and already has your back. Now… let’s get to the work of helping you heal and thrive!
nate care.
Contact Us
Interested in working together? Send me a message with your questions, or send your phone number with some good times to call you. I can’t wait to hear from you and see how I might able to help!