Maria Poston, Ph.D.

My Approach:

My goal is to provide you with a safe, trusting, and supportive environment that promotes vitality, creativity, agency, and meaning.  At the same time, my goal is to also support you in developing effective life skills so you can negotiate and confidently resolve life’s challenges.  I integrate various therapeutic approaches, specifically, cognitive-behavioral interventions, psychodynamic approaches, and trauma-informed therapies, that have been empirically shown to effectively alleviate distress, overcome the effects of trauma, manage emotions, improve interpersonal relationships, and increase reflective functioning.  Because I believe that you get the most out of therapy when you are fully engaged in the process, I take a collaborative approach and consider your unique history and the current circumstances that you bring to our work together. 

Professional Background:

I have worked with individuals across the lifespan from diverse backgrounds and whose presenting concerns have included depression, grief and loss, anxiety, trauma, relationship conflict, social skills deficits, self-esteem struggles, life transitions and adjustment difficulties, stress and anger management, academic/work stress, and struggles with meaning and direction.

Prior to Madison Park Psychological Services, I worked in various therapeutic settings, including the Jewish Board Child Development Center, LIU Brooklyn’s Psychological Services Center, Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, and the Metropolitan Center for Mental Health.  In addition, I completed an APA accredited doctoral internship at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, which included rotations on an adult inpatient unit, the child/adolescent outpatient clinic, the psychiatric emergency department, and the outpatient Wellness and Recovery program.

I received my B.A. in Psychology from Baylor University and my M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Houston in Clear Lake.  Prior to embarking on my doctoral studies, I worked for nine years as a staff therapist on an adolescent inpatient unit at the University of Texas Health Science Center – Harris County Psychiatric Center providing individual and group therapy.  I earned my Ph.D. in  Clinical Psychology at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, where my academic research focused on understanding how different social experiences and close relationships impact our ability to reflect on ourselves and others.  My dissertation examined how individual differences in attachment style interact with different social experiences, particularly, ostracism, overinclusion, and inclusion, to influence mentalizing and emotion regulation.