Beryl Nightingale, PH.D
LICENSED PSYCHOLOGIST & NEUROPSYCHOLOGIST
Welcome to our practice and thanks for reading this! I started in my practice as an individual practitioner doing therapy and testing with children, adolescents and adults. Over time we have expanded with the goal of offering lower fee testing so that more families could have access to evaluations. This offering of range of fee has waxed and waned over time, as we train and integrate new clinicians. We are making space for a new trainee soon!
I started in my doctoral program at the New School for Social Research with the intention of working with adults, but through a series of twists and turns, including my love of testing, and my interest in children, I went deeply down the road of neuropsychological evaluations. I find this work infinitely fascinating, a way to put the pieces together from multiple perspectives, to achieve a deep understanding of a complex situation. I see these evaluations as the first step in supporting and caring for a child or teen, so that they can get what they need to comfortable in their lives. For adults, testing can be a way to make sense of themselves and their experience, after a long and confusing road.
My initial orientation to psychology comes from a relational psychoanalytic, attachment theory perspective, the belief that we have unconscious and conscious parts of ourselves developed through repeated patterns in early relationships that guide our emotions and behaviors. When I started working with children, it was immediately clear to me that while this understanding was very pertinent, it was also extremely important to add more perspective to my work.
I love to play! I am fluent in this child language :) Children need to engage in play for fun and for working through and understanding their experience. They do not typically have the ability to put words to their feelings, especially in situations of trauma and loss. In contrast, working through neurodevelopmental fault lines requires a different approach that is more didactic. Here the first step is developing self-awareness, respect and acceptance of how one’s mind words, and only after this, gain strategies and procedures to achieve desired skills. The goal is to adapt.
These two approaches (play therapy and learning strategies through a more behaviorally based techniques) are very different. I have learned over time, a deep belief shared throughout my practice, that using a bottom-up, person centered approach is very important for individuals who struggle with aspects of trauma and neurodevelopmental weaknesses that make it hard to take in external demands. For example, both trauma and autism have the need for sense of safety in common. In some situations, our work with children and adolescents serves to prepare them for more empirically based, manualized behavioral treatments. For these treatments to be effective, the individual must be motivated and open to engage in them. They must have a certain mindset of trust and attitude of compliance. Sometimes this is asking too much if a person is not ready.
When I became a parent, I was just completing my post-doc in pediatric neuropsychology at NYU Child Study. When I look back at those many years ago, I appreciate how much I did not know at the time and how much I have learned, and most surely will continue to learn as I grow older. Becoming a parent is a monumental developmental milestone that has deepened my understanding of children and parenting; when children are relatively easily navigating the world (there are some!) it is easy to feel like one is being a good parent! But when a child has periods of great challenge, one can easily blame oneself. When you have a child who is struggling, and you have tried so many different things, blame and judgment can still emanate from others. Parenting can be incredibly difficult, but with it I have learned much. I have great respect for my children, I have learned at their feet. They have taught me to throw away all assumptions and expectations, and to take them for who they are and where they are.
Overall, I think the kids are always right. I do not mean they should always be in charge, or that they always have good judgement. I mean, rather, the perspective of a child is always true and pure. You cannot argue with their feelings or their assessments; they come from a place of ongoing development and change. I believe that having a deep understanding of emotional, cognitive and physical development also greatly informs my work with adults. Adults too need to play! There is great relief when one achieves a sense of irony and humor in response to the awful and difficult. Everything is connected. In our practice we aspire to bring understanding gained from the multiple lens of emotional development, family influence, cultural definitions and neurocognitive makeup, to achieve flexibility, responsiveness and comfort in one’s psyche in this ever complex world.
Contact Dr. Nightingale
Dr. Nightingale can be reached directly at
bnightingale@heightspsychologycollective.com
(347)-495-3624
44 Court Street, Brooklyn NY 11201
Dr. Nightingale is currently working remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic and is available for digital sessions.