Our Therapists

Dr. Richard Girard-Domena,  Ed.D., LCSW-R is a licensed clinical social worker with over a decade of direct clinical and teaching experience. At the current time, beyond treating clients he serves as the clinical director of Eastern Suffolk Counseling. Dr. Domenas work experience covers a wide range of clinical experiences from private practice to psychiatric hospitals. He works with individuals across the lifespan including children, adolescents, and adults. He places the client’s needs first and works alongside the client to shape the therapy best suited from them.

Dr. Girard-Domena utilizes a client-focused approach, grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy to work with his clients. With this approach, he is able to address a wide variety of client concerns. He is comfortable working with individuals, couples, family, and groups. He works closely with clients experiencing concerns such as anxiety, depression, oppositional defiant disorder, family conflict, stress management, attachment disorders, and other concerns. He offers assessments for needs such as ADHD, bullying, depression, anxiety, bariatric surgery, among others.

Andrew Drost is a licensed clinical social worker with over six years of experience working as a licensed social worker. Andrew is an Albany University graduate and earned his master’s degree at Stony Brook University. He has worked in a mental health clinical setting for 5 years with children, adolescents, and adult populations. He has worked with a wide range of mental health diagnosis and utilized multiple different intervention strategies to provide the highest level of care for his patients. Andrew has effectively treated patients suffering from Adjustment Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, Panic Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Eating Disorders, Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Paranoid Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Substance abuse and behavioral addictions. Andrew also works quite well with relationship issues and people who suffer from self-destructive patterns of codependence. Andrew specializes in Cognitive Behavioral therapy but has also instituted other behavioral interventions into his practice. He has utilized Dialectical Behavioral therapy, Insight-oriented therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Crisis Intervention. Andrew provides Individual therapy, Couples, and Marital Counseling, and Family therapy regularly in his practice. His patients describe him as compassionate, with good listening skills, and a relaxed and approachable demeanor. Andrew’s schedule is flexible as he offers morning, daytime, and nighttime availability to accommodate the needs of all patients depending on their work and school schedules.

Theresa M Dyer, LCSW-R is a licensed clinical social worker with a rich background in the field of health and human services. Ms. Dyer brings professional skills and knowledge from a number of diverse professional work experiences to her clinical work. She has worked in the field of developmental disabilities (with populations ranging from infancy through geriatric) in environments including early intervention, school-based, home-based and vocational/manufacturing based. In addition, Ms. Dyer has extensive experience in medical social work in a level 1 trauma hospital environment, child and adolescent psychiatric social work in an inpatient psychiatric hospital environment and hospital social work management in a premier children’s hospital environment. Most recently Ms. Dyer’s career experiences have been in the substance abuse and addictions field and in the mental health field in outpatient clinical settings.

Ms. Dyer is comfortable working with individuals, couples, families, and groups with populations from age 10 years throughout the lifespan. She is sensitive of cultural, religious, ethnic, sexual orientation and gender differences amongst people. Her approach to counseling is first and foremost an understanding, appreciation, and respect for the fact that it takes courage for any person to engage in therapy. Counseling is a means to better understand oneself and one’s environment and is most often engaged in when one is experiencing discomfort or emotional pain. It takes courage to seek out help and especially to commit to the therapeutic process, as this often involves making (positive) changes in ones’ perception, attitude, and behavior. Ms. Dyer recognizes that change may be difficult as we tend to fear the unknown. However, the support of a therapist and the understanding that; more often than not FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real is often enough to push through the fear and begin engaging in a more comfortable way of living.

Ms Dyer is especially skilled in the area of trauma-informed care and in recognizing the various symptoms that result from traumatic experiences and/or dysfunctional family systems, including a poor sense of self/adult child syndrome, depression, anxiety, negative self-talk, self-harm, dissociation, guilt and shame, learned helplessness and codependent behaviors. She utilizes a number of strengths-based skills and techniques including but not limited to cognitive behavioral therapy, rational emotive behavioral therapy, attachment theory, mindfulness, acceptance, compassion for self and others and self-care to address these and other concerns.