Brooklyn Heights Behavioral Associates

06/16/2026

New York City.

53 years.

It's done. 🗽🏀💛

If you're crying and you're not sure exactly why, I want to tell you something.

You know why.

Because you didn't just watch a basketball team win a championship.

You felt something that was carried to you across generations.

From a parent who watched with you. From a grandparent who waited their whole life and maybe never saw this night. From every version of yourself that kept a small, careful piece of hope alive through every heartbreak and every disappointing season and every year that wasn't the year.

That hope didn't belong just to you. It was borrowed from everyone who loved this team before you. And on behalf of all of them, you got to feel it land.

In DBT we talk about the body holding what the mind can't always explain.

The racing heart. The tears that arrive before the thought does. The stranger you hugged on the street without thinking.

That is not irrational.

That is 53 years of a city's nervous system finally getting to exhale.

Don't regulate. Don't manage it. Don't talk yourself down from it.

Let it be as big as it is.

You waited for this. You are allowed to feel all of it. Every single cell of it.

New York. We're here. We finally got here.

💛🗽🏀

06/15/2026

Raising kids, especially neurodivergent kids, means throwing out the traditional parenting playbook. Trying to force a brain that works differently into a rigid, "perfect" box will only burn you both out. Living in the middle path means accepting the mess, honoring their sensory limits with food, and prioritizing mental health over perfect attendance.
Which of these three rules are you breaking today? Tell me below!

06/09/2026

Last night the Knicks lost Game 3 at home.

And this morning across New York City, kids woke up disappointed. 👇

What you say to them today matters more than you think.

Don’t say: “It’s fine, it’s just a game.”
Their nervous system knows it’s not fine. Dismissing it teaches them their feelings aren’t real.

Don’t say: “Don’t worry, they’ll win.”
You don’t know that. And promising outcomes you can’t control teaches anxiety not resilience.

Say this:

“That was really hard to watch. I feel it too. AND we’re still in this.”

Two sentences. Both true at the same time.

In DBT we call this the middle path: holding disappointment AND hope simultaneously without collapsing into either one.

The Knicks are still up 2-1.
The series isn’t over.
And your child just got one of the most important lessons real life has to offer - that one hard night doesn’t write the ending.

You are still in this. All of you. 💛🗽🏀

06/08/2026

Karl-Anthony Towns scored 21 points in Game 2 of the NBA Finals last night.
Before the final possession, he prayed to his mom.
His mother Jacqueline Cruz-Towns died in April 2020 from COVID-19 at 58 years old. She had been at every game of his career. He also lost seven other family members to the virus that same year.
She never got to see this Finals run.
After Game 2 he said:
"If you lose a parent, you just look for signs. I'll take any sign I can get. I prayed to her strong before that possession. I take it as a sign my mom was here with me."
As a DBT therapist, I want to name what KAT is doing. Because it is one of the most clinically profound things I have ever seen a person do in public.
He is living the dialectic.
She is gone. AND she is with him.
He is grieving. AND he is thriving.
The loss broke him. AND the loss built him.
In DBT the dialectic is not a concept. It's a way of living. Holding two opposite truths at the same time without collapsing into either one.
KAT is not pretending his grief doesn't exist.
He is not letting it swallow him.
He is carrying his mother into the hardest and most beautiful moments of his life — and letting her be part of both.
That is the middle path.If your kids ask why he points to the sky tonight at MSG — tell them this:
He's talking to his mom. She can't be in the stands. But she's with him anyway. That's what love looks like when it outlasts a person.
Save this for everyone you know who is carrying someone with them tonight.

06/07/2026

Up 2-0. Coming home to MSG on Monday.

And I want to say something to every NYC parent right now. 👇

When you’re winning, when things are going better than you let yourself hope, your nervous system does something unexpected.

It gets anxious.

It starts scanning for what could go wrong.
It hedges against the joy so the fall doesn’t hurt as much.

That anticipatory dread in the middle of good things is real and it has a name.

In DBT we call it emotion mind blocking wise mind.

Your brain has been through enough loss that it doesn’t fully trust the good yet.

Here’s what I want you to tell your kids tonight:

Don’t watch Monday’s game with one eye on what could go wrong.

Watch it the way you watched your very first Knicks game - with your whole body, your whole heart, no protection.

Joy is not a trick.
This moment is not a setup for heartbreak.

This is what winning feels like.

Let it in completely.
All of it.
Right now.

Game 3. Monday. Home. MSG. 🗽🏀💛

06/06/2026

Mayor Mamdani cancelled bedtime. And as a DBT therapist, I fully support this decision. 👇

He signed an executive order Monday repealing bedtimes for NYC kids during the NBA Finals so they can watch the Knicks play for a championship.

And here's what I want every parent in this city to know:

Letting your child stay up late for this isn't bad parenting. It's intentional parenting.

In DBT we talk about the middle path: the ability to hold structure AND flexibility at the same time. Rules matter. AND some moments matter more than rules.

The memory your child is making right now, staying up past bedtime, watching their city go electric, feeling what it's like to be part of something historic...

That goes into their nervous system. That becomes a story they tell their own kids one day.

Mayor Mamdani didn't just cancel bedtime. He gave every NYC child a memory that no classroom can create.

Let them stay up. 💛🗽🏀

06/05/2026

Sadhguru said something that stopped me in my tracks. 👇

"Children only come through you. They don't come from you. They are not your property."

As a DBT therapist, I want to tell you why this is one of the most clinically important things a parent can understand.

In psychology, we call it differentiation: the ability to see your child as a completely separate human being with their own thoughts, feelings, values, and inner world that belong entirely to them.

Not an extension of you.
Not a second chance at your own childhood.
Not a project to be perfected.
Not a reflection of your success or failure as a parent.

A whole, separate person.

When parents can't make that shift — when a child's choices feel like a personal verdict on the parent — that's when control takes over. That's when the relationship starts to fracture.

And here's what I see in my therapy room over and over:

The parents who have the strongest relationships with their kids are not the ones who did the most. They're the ones who got the most curious. Who asked more questions than they gave answers. Who made their home feel like a place where their child's inner world was welcomed, not managed.

Sadhguru called it good company.

I call it secure attachment.

They're the same thing.

The most important thing you can give your child is the experience of being genuinely known. Not managed. Not moulded.

Known.

Save this if it landed. 💛

06/04/2026

The biological ambush of the 4 PM meltdown.
Brains with ADHD already produce less dopamine, which helps regulate emotions. When blood sugar drops, dopamine drops with it. This chemical dip triggers full-blown dysregulation. By offering a high-protein snack the second they walk in the door, you stabilize their nervous system before the storm hits.
Drop a 🍎 in the comments if snacks save your sanity in the afternoons.

06/03/2026

06/03/2026

Gary Vaynerchuk posted himself screaming at his TV after the Knicks won the Eastern Conference Finals and honestly, same. 🗽🏀

But as a DBT therapist I want to say something to every New Yorker sitting in this feeling right now.

"I don't know how to feel. I don't know what to do."

That's not just Gary Vee.
That's 27 years of waiting finally breaking open.

And here's what I need you to hear:

Overwhelming joy dysregulates your nervous system just as much as grief.

We talk about DBT skills for anxiety, anger and loss all the time.

Nobody talks about what happens when something you've been carrying your whole life finally arrives and your body doesn't know how to hold it yet.

The racing heart.
The tears that don't make sense.
The "I don't know whether to laugh or cry."
The feeling that's so big it almost hurts.

That's not weakness.
That's your nervous system processing something it has waited 27 years to feel.

The last time the Knicks were in the Finals was 1999. There are fans in this city who have been holding this hope their entire adult lives. Parents who watched with their kids. Kids who watched with their parents. Grandparents who never got to see it.

Let yourself feel all of it.

Don't rush to regulate.
Don't talk yourself out of the joy.
Don't shrink it because it feels too big.

Sit in it.
Borrow it.
Let it land.

You earned this feeling, New York. 💛🗽🏀