Max Cutler is a NY state Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and trauma therapist who specializes in the treatment of trauma, anxiety and depression. He is a Certified Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapist and has specialized training in treating complex, developmental and attachment trauma. He has been awarded an Advanced Certificate in Complex Trauma and Dissociation. He serves adolescents and adults (ages 16 years old and up).

Max has extensive experience and advanced training working with trauma survivors of all shapes and sizes, including: adult children of narcissistic abuse, alcoholics; victim survivors of sexual violence or child sexual abuse and/or domestic violence trauma.

He has a special interest in working with clients who struggle with PTSD, dissociation, behavioral addictions, toxic masculinity, gender based violence, childhood emotional neglect, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) and the dissociative disorders, including Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Max has advanced training in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Motivational Interviewing. He has studied Family Therapy at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York City. He opened Max Cutler Therapy in 2017.  

Max’s approach to therapy

Max conceptualizes psychological difficulties — symptoms, compulsions or behaviors — as originating in traumatic life experiences. Trauma is defined as a terrifying, dysregulating and overwhelming experience in which your physical or psychological safety feels threatened. Sadly, many commonplace life experiences can be traumatic.

Western society as a whole, including family, friends and larger institutions do not usually appreciate how traumatic simple, everyday life experiences usually experienced in childhood can be. Experiences like: moving or transitions in school (loss); relationship loss (rejection); parents being mis-attuned to your childhood needs (may be experienced as neglectful); being teased or bullied (humiliation); family divorce, separation (loss) or growing up with a single parent (can be experienced by the child as abandonment).

These types of everyday experiences—what trauma therapists call “small t traumas”— cause a type of “death by a thousand paper cuts” as they occur and recur chronically, on a daily basis over long periods of time (think: loyalty conflict in divorce, bullying, or exposure to toxic, dysfunctional or mentally ill caregivers or family members during childhood). Max’s experience working with trauma survivors has proven that small t traumas are just as devastating the “Big T Traumas” that society acknowledges as classically “traumatic.”