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BRIEF PROFESSIONAL BIO

Del Sasso, PsyD is a Queer and Genderqueer Liberation Psychologist in New Jersey.  After graduating from Rutgers GSAPP, they pursued postdoctoral training in sex and gender diversity and developed a specialties in LGBTQ+ advocacy and transgender care across the lifespan.  Del created RISE Psychological Services, a practice dedicated to joyfully affirming treatment for clients and families both in and outside the mainstream, from trauma-informed and empowerment-driven perspectives.  RISE services are available in Central New Jersey as well as virtually to clients in the 42 states covered by PsyPact. Del also provides training and consulting around cultural competence with transgender and wider LGBTQ+ communities, and is often sought out as an expert by mental health and medical professionals, K-12 and higher education settings, and legal and business organizations. 

VIDEO BIO

LONG PERSONAL BIO

I grew up a closeted, high-masking gender and neuro-diverse, queer youth in the 90s. I was a feminist and “social justice warrior” long before it was cool. I began activism and organizing in high school, where I cut my teeth as a lone progressive voice in a very white, very Republican suburb. Although I had wonderful friends who were a complete life-line, I always felt I had more in common with my liberal teachers than anyone else in my town or family. Well before high-masking neurodiversity was a thing, I was lucky enough to be able to utilize a combination of fierce anxiety and hyperfocus to succeed in an educational system that was pretty tough on my nervous system and failed to recognize any of my educational or mental health needs.

In college, I very practically majored in Creative Fiction Writing and Women’s Studies. It was a fascinating time to be studying gender. It was actually two years into my program that the major was changed to Gender Studies because we focused an awful lot on the negative impacts of narrow gender roles on men. We were solidly into Third Wave Feminism, championing intersectionality and examining prior movements for gender liberation through the lenses of racial exclusion and colonialism. Expanding a Feminist movement to encapsulate the liberation of men and BIPOC people from all parts of the world felt like exploding the entire framework of the movements of the 60s and 70s. Little did we know, the very concept of gender was about to explode as well.

I think I was drawn to studying gender because it felt like both a very important concept to me and also an extremely limiting one. Years later, I would understand that as a queer person who didn’t fit within the gender binary, I was trying to understand my own experience through the gender liberation lens that was available at the time. -mostly based on liberating women and men from limiting gender roles. I did my doctoral dissertation on gender egalitarian heterosexual marriages, concluding that they had higher marital satisfaction and other benefits.

Writing and music have been tremendous sources of comfort and self-expression for me throughout my life. There was a point early in college where I certainly would have left and not returned due to mental health if it hadn’t been for my college a cappella group. College was also when I began a long journey of my own mental health treatment and trauma work. Despite graduating with lots of employment-ready skills (insert sarcasm), I was a bit adrift afterwards. I worked as a receptionist for an insurance company, a server at a wine bar, and substitute teacher. Eventually, I took a job teaching High School English, where I learned I was much better suited to helping one youth, one person, one family at a time on my own terms, in my own space.

I really relate to neurodiverse youth who talk to me about the sensory and social overload they experience in school as I remember it well, not only from being a student, but as a teacher as well. I found it hard to focus on educating, given the immense mental health needs I felt so acutely aware of in my students. While it wasn’t the right career fit for me, I found myself passionate about advocating for adolescents and improving their mental health in school environments. This led to many years of activism to improve school enivironments for LGBTQ+ students, including helping to write one of the first affirming Transgender Student Policies in NJ, consulting with a number of school districts, and beginning to provide trainings in K through 12 and higher education settings. I still find adolescents magnificent, which is working out really well for me now as I am parenting two of them.

My resolve to protect LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, and all young people has only grown as on the heals of the devatstation the pandemic wrought on young people, relentless legislative and social attacks are damaging the mental health of all young people.

After attending the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers, obtaining my MA and PsyD in Clinical Psychology, I was able to come full circle, studying gender and sexuality again, this time within a clinical context. I completed a two-year post-doctoral training program, obtaining AASECT Sex Therapy certification, and developing a specialty in treatment of transgender clients across the lifespan.

Nature, skiing, songwriting