Psychologists Dr. Mike Abrams and Dr. Lidia D. Abrams provide caring, highly confidential and experienced help with offices in Clifton & Jersey City and provide remote care when necessary. Drs. Mike & Lidia Abrams are board certified psychologists, having spent years studying research-based psychotherapy. Both have collaborated with or studied under the creators of modern therapy: Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck. Drs Abrams have authored 5 psychology books, 9 textbook chapters, and actively conduct research producing numerous research articles. They also teach or supervise psychotherapists in training.

Books by Drs. Abrams

Eating and
Weight

Text on Personality Theories

Death and
Dying

Jersey City

Sexuality and Its Disorders

Book on Applying Evolution and Genetics to Evolutionary Psychology

From their years as professional psychologists in New Jersey and psychologists in New York, Drs. Abrams' approaches have become enhanced by continually training, teaching, conducting original research and supervising other therapists. They have helped people learn that through mastering their thinking and their response to life events, they can mitigate the pain of anxiety, depression, and impaired intimacy. Both Dr. Mike Abrams and Dr. Lidia Abrams take a practical and sincere approach to helping people. Their clients are partners in the process who are always apprised of what is being done in the psychological process. Unlike many of their peers Drs. Abrams avoid seeking answers from a person's past and instead focus on the present. For even if a person suffers from past trauma's they exist at the moment through the way the person currently conceptualizes their past adversities. Their approach is the therapeutic method that is best supported by scientific evidence: cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Both Dr Abrams are board certified in these methods and are authors & teachers of its applications. Many psychologists in New Jersey and many more psychologists in New York have recently adopted CBT as their primary approach. This is laudable; but the fact that Dr. Mike Abrams and Dr. Lidia Abrams have been practicing and contributed to this established method for 30 years adds a unique legitimacy to their services. They are here to help with psychological therapy, couples & individual counseling, sex therapy, and life coaching.

We'll help during your most difficult times

Dr. Mike Abrams and Dr. Lidia D. Abrams practice Rational-Emotive/ Cogntive Behavior Therapy. These treatments are the discoveries of the psychology pioneer Dr. Albert Ellis.

Ellis found that, a nominally intelligent person will often act in ways that seem self-defeating or even foolish. Ellis observed that this is a result of the inherent tendency for people to harbor irrational beliefs about many aspects of life. Ellis further observed that people can be fully aware of these irrational beliefs but tend to tenaciously maintain them despite their leading to continual despair. This important observation formed the foundation of a new psychotherapy that shares much with the stoic philosophers. Stoicism holds that emotions must be strictly controlled and hedonism is the ultimate motivation. Ellis was led to his conclusions based, in part, from his readings of the philosophers like the stoics Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. The Stoics held that disruptive emotions like fear or jealously arose from, false judgments and that the sage--a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection--would not undergo them. Sage status, according to the stoics, was achieved by accepting the principles implied in the quotations below. That is, all extreme, disturbing, or neurotic emotions are a result of the individual's view of the situation, not the situation itself.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.— Marcus Aurelius

For freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with what you desire, but by destroying your desire.— Epictetus

Consequently, as collaborators and students of Ellis, our approach works to help bring peoples beliefs into harmony with their actions, life challenges, and relationships. This method does not require a recapitulation of a person's life to effect change. Instead, it requires helping a person see that they are indeed operating with irrational beliefs or dysfunctional cognition. Once this is deeply accepted, the individual need only work on changing them through changes in behavior and perspective. For more on this click the link above on articles and information.

Available on this site is both a blog and pages with numerous research reports, articles, and essays on psychotherapy. We present this as the informed consumer of health care tends to stay healthier. This is especially true in the world of psychology and psychiatry, as too often practitioners obtain their credentials and fail the make the effort to keep up with the growing body of research. Indeed, with the rapid growth of knowledge in this field it is difficult to maintain a working knowledge of findings in pathology, neuroscience, and therapeutic technique. But the difficulty is no excuse for failing to do so. Many practitioners will say that knowledge of science is not important as therapy is an art. If it is, it must be an art like medicine which combines the artistic use of science and research. Which the therapist must master. Then, and only then, can the art of psychotherapy consist of the therapist's informed interpolation or extrapolation of the extant evidence.

As much as we would like to work with you, you might conclude that you are seeking another psychologist or mental health clinician please go to our page on articles and information.  We provide suggestions on what to look for in seeking a psychotherapist.

Dr. Mike Abrams and Dr. Lidia Abrams psychologist NJ Licensed and NY Licensed is dedicated to the highest level of client care.