Terésa Stern, LCSW, SEP

Terésa Stern is a psychotherapist specializing in clients who have experienced trauma. She is the owner of Mindful Therapy Brooklyn, where she sees clients and serves as Clinical Supervisor.

Terésa supports clients in their journey to connect with self and others, build self-regulation and flexibility, learn to self-advocate in healthy ways, experience joy, and live in the here and now. She considers the relationship between herself and each client to be an important component of therapy, and values the shared humanity, humor, and compassion in each of those relationships.

Terésa Stern earned her MSW from the Hunter College School of Social Work, graduating with honors in a trauma-focused concentration created by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN). She wrote a textbook for graduate students, commissioned by the Network, about trauma's impact on child neurobiological development. Terésa has given presentations for numerous organizations, including the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, St. Vincent’s Children’s Home in Michigan, and the Lineage Project. She began working in the trauma survivors' community in 1990, serving at the Mount Sinai Sexual Abuse and Violence Intervention Program (SAVI) as public speaker, emergency room advocate, rape crisis counselor, and support group facilitator. In 2008 she founded Starfish Body & Soul, a holistic movement program for adult survivors of childhood abuse, and led ongoing groups at SAVI and the Joyful Heart Foundation.

As a social work intern, Terésa worked with children, adolescents and families at Good Shepherds Services in the Bronx and at the Bellevue Hospital Child and Adolescent Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic. She completed a 3-year training in Somatic Experiencing® (SE®) and has worked as a teaching assistant at SE®  trainings since 2013. After training in 2012 at the Boston Trauma Center in SMART (Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment), a modality for children that incorporates sensory integration, Terésa and her colleague Marice Maldari co-founded Mindful Parenting Brooklyn and created the first SMART room in New York City for therapy with children. Terésa became an Internal Family Systems therapist in 2016. She is trained in Somatic Resilience and Regulation (SRR), which uses touch as a therapeutic approach to trauma. In 2022, Terésa began training in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy through the certificate program at Fluence.

Terésa is the mother of two adult daughters. A published writer, she likes to hike, bike, dance, cook, make collages, and play with her dog, Ernie. Her previous careers included typography, marketing writing and design, and freelance journalism. She has been involved in fighting for justice and equality since 1968.