Psychotherapy for individuals, couples, young adults, and parents.
I’m Bridgette Vidunas, R.N., L.C.S.W.
With more than 30 years of clinical experience across hospital, school, group, and private practice settings, you’ll find thoughtful support for emotional, relational, developmental, and life-stage concerns when you work with me.
I am dedicated to working with people of diverse backgrounds and my practice is safe for the LGBTQIA community.
Who I Help
Young Adults
Becoming an autonomous and independent adult can be one of the most difficult experiences humans go through, and it doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. I can help you navigate self-doubt, develop a healthy self-esteem, and learn to set boundaries in friendships, romantic explorations, with family and yourself.
If you’re struggling with time management, budgeting, anxiety and/or depression, we can work together to help you feel less lonely and isolated, and to move through this tricky time while you discover who you want to become.
Parents
For over thirty years I’ve worked with school-aged children, conducting play therapy sessions and talk therapy with tweens and teens. That included family therapy sessions and parent guidance.
I help you talk through concerns you have with your child’s development. In these sessions, we look at implementing environmental changes before jumping into more intensive individual treatment.
Common behavioral concerns include bed wetting, separation anxiety, school phobia, anxiety and depression, self harming, friendship conflicts, screentime usage and social media arguments, substance abuse and other compulsive behaviors.
I also work with blended families, adoption and identity, divorce, chronic illness, and death of a loved one.
These sessions are tailored to guide you so you can better guide your child through difficult issues.
Couples
Every couple is as unique as the individuals in the relationship. Your family history, your separate values, life experiences, and your shared and individual ideas about the future can create opportunities for choppy waters.
When we work together, we’ll explore attachment theory and family systems theory to improve communication inside the relationship, and move toward a stronger bond between the two of you.
Chronic or Acute Illness
As a registered nurse, I am uniquely qualified to assist you in navigating the emotional and physical challenges of living a full life while adapting to the immediate challenges of an acute, chronic or progressive illness. My office is ADA accessible.
Grieving and Loss
We humans grieve for the tangible and the intangible. It is a painful journey, both physically and emotionally, to grapple with the seemingly unbearable feelings that come with loss. But you can learn how to grieve without losing yourself, and to trust that you will get through it.
“The pain of grief is just as much a part of life as the joy of love; it is, perhaps, the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment. To ignore this fact, or to pretend that it is not so, is to put on emotional blinkers which leave us unprepared for the losses that will inevitably occur in our own lives and unprepared to help others cope with losses in theirs.”
About My Fee
My fees are established on an individual basis based on patient resources. I am not currently on insurance panels but provide bills for patients to submit for out-of-network reimbursement from their insurance companies.
I bill monthly unless you prefer to pay session by session. I expect payment within a week. I reserve the agreed upon scheduled time for each patient and have a 24-hour cancellation policy.
The consultation process is important in order to establish whether or not we are a good fit.
I will answer administrative questions via telephone but I strongly encourage an in-person consultation. Experiencing a session in person, or via zoom, will be useful to determine whether you want to move forward.
The Ritual of Therapy
& My Process
Life moves faster than ever, our attention constantly pulled in multiple directions at once.
When you enter my office in Gramercy you enter a space reserved for a sacred in-person experience where we sit together to think deeply about what’s troubling you.
No cell phones, no quick switching from Zoom meeting to telehealth appointment, no distractions and zero judgement.
Confidentiality, empathy, trust and respect are non-negotiables as we work through these difficult life moments together.
I do offer telehealth sessions, but if you are in the NYC region, in-person sessions are strongly recommended for your greatest therapeutic benefit.
Individual sessions are 45 minutes, Couples and Family Sessions last 60 minutes.
I’m Bridgette Vidunas, R.N., L.C.S.W.
I’m a registered nurse with a Bachelors of Science degree in Nursing from the University of Pittsburgh. In my early career I worked as a hospital R.N. during the AIDS crisis in New York City. Helping the patients and their families navigate and cope with the unimaginable emotional and physical pain led me to a career in mental health.
I’ve since worked in various inpatient psychiatric hospital settings in NYC working with children, adolescents and adults. I later earned a Master’s of Social Work degree from Hunter College with a focus on group therapy and clinical practice. And then psychoanalytic psychotherapy training at The National Institute for The Psychotherapies (NIP) where I focused on the treatment of children and adolescents.
I have completed a 300 hour Jivamukti Yoga Teacher Training, and incorporate mindfulness training and meditation practice in my therapeutic sessions as reliable tools to help you become your best self.
I've maintained a general practice for over three decades.