Laura Goorin, PhD

10/13/2026

After my postdoctoral fellowship at Bellevue, I attended a friend’s baby shower and met someone who spoke passionately about her work with young children at Montefiore. I worked up the courage to email her my resume, unknowingly using a DBT skill called “Opposite Action,” since networking has never come naturally to me.

Soon after, Alec Miller, co-author of Dialectical Behavior Therapy with Suicidal Adolescents, called to tell me a position had opened. I felt like I had clinically arrived home.

That work introduced me to DBT’s most powerful idea, from Marsha Linehan, who built the treatment she herself needed after past treatments failed her: treatment may have failed you, but you have not failed treatment. We would never blame a patient for failing cancer treatment. We would blame the treatment and seek a second opinion.

In my new blog post, I explore the core DBT modules and how this approach gave hope to a population once considered untreatable.

Read it here: https://www.drlauragoorin.com/on-cultivating-mindfulness.../

I had recently completed my post-doctoral fellowship at Bellevue, and I gleefully attended a baby shower for one of my most primal, tenderest friends (from literal high school, whom I ran into in the hallways of Bellevue!) She threw her arms out and screeched, “I knew I would run into you!” “R...

09/23/2026

On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I’ve been reflecting on what I learned from working with 9/11 first responders at Bellevue Hospital.

One of the most powerful lessons was how our psychological defenses can protect us until an experience comes along that makes those defenses impossible to maintain. For many officers, 9/11 challenged beliefs they had relied on throughout their careers. What had once helped them survive suddenly no longer made sense.

Sometimes, healing begins when those defenses melt, and we are finally able to see ourselves, others, and our experiences with greater compassion.

Read the full reflection here: https://www.drlauragoorin.com/on-the-25th-anniversary-of-9-11-what-9-11-first-responders-taught-me-about-the-power-of-our-defenses-melting/

Content warning: This post contains 9/11-related details.

September 11, 2013 / CBS News, Botte, J. This photograph shows William "Bill" Fischer - an NYPD Emergency Services Unit officer – who was involved in the rescue of Port Authority Police Officer Sgt. John McLoughlin. McLoughlin was the last man pulled alive from the ruins of the World Trade Center....

09/09/2026

Grief researchers have a name for something many of us do instinctively: “Continued Bonds”, staying connected to someone we’ve lost instead of feeling that we have to “let go.”

Neuroscience offers insight into why these connections can feel so real. The brain systems involved in attachment, memory, and reward keep responding when we remember, talk about, or engage with someone who has died. How people maintain these bonds can look very different across cultures. Research has found that “Continued Bonds” may be associated with poorer mental health outcomes in New York, while being associated with better outcomes in Hong Kong.

I break this down in my latest article.

Read the full article here: https://www.drlauragoorin.com/on-death-why-you-might-hable-con-ella-talk-to-her/

The takeaway for anyone grieving: your relationship with someone doesn't have to end at death. Visit their resting place. Keep their rituals alive. Find meaningful ways to carry the relationship forward.

Continued Bonds and Death Differentiations in Hong Kong, P. R., China vs NYC In one of my most treasured Pedro Almodóvar films, a Spanish cinematic tale, “Talk to Her,” the multiple-award-winning film from 2002, the titular scene portrays the nurse, Benigno, caretaking for his beloved, a baller...

08/24/2026

Learning a second language is more than memorizing vocabulary or getting the grammar right. For me, learning Spanish became a journey into culture, confidence, and a new way of seeing myself.

When I studied abroad in Chile, I discovered that the Spanish I learned in classrooms didn't always prepare me for everyday conversations. Expressions, gestures, and customs carried meanings that couldn't always be understood through direct translation.

My biggest breakthrough came when I realized that context could be its own language. I began observing what was happening around me, instead of translating every word in my head. Suddenly, language felt less like something I had to decode and more like something I could experience.

Read the full article here: https://www.drlauragoorin.com/meditations-on-second-languages-fluency-and-cultural-epiphanies/

If you're learning another language, don't just learn the words. Learn the context, the culture, and the world behind them.

“I am a turtle, wherever I go I carry 'home' on my back.” ― Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), pp. 21 Anzaldua's quote explores the cultural vibrancy of my personal mystery of self- iterations captured psychically in another country, learning a second languag...

08/11/2026

My father was a brilliant pediatric oncologist, the kind of doctor whose mind moved faster than his handwriting could keep up with. When Dementia began taking pieces of him, I didn't expect painting to become part of his world.

Then he sent me his painting of my three-year-old niece. It was a simple, lopsided circle. My first reaction was grief, because all I could see was everything he'd lost.

A wise friend looked at that same circle and told me it was beautiful, that he was painting love. That shift, from an Absence Mindset to a Presence Mindset, completely changed how I understood that moment.

Read the full story here: https://www.drlauragoorin.com/circle-of-meaning-mesmerized-by-absence-vs-presence-mindset-orientations/

Sometimes, shifting from an Absence Mindset to a Presence Mindset helps us notice what remains meaningful, alive, and beautiful.

There exists a profound difference in perspective when we radically change orientations from "Absence Mindset" towards "Presence Mindset"

07/28/2026

What helps us remain resilient when life changes in ways we never imagined?

One of the most meaningful lessons I learned from my graduate adviser, renowned resilience researcher George Bonanno, is that resilience is often rooted in what he calls a Flexibility Mindset: our ability to adapt, reassess, and keep moving forward.

In my latest blog, I reflect on this idea through a story of resilience that has stayed with me for years. It's a reminder that even after tremendous loss, we can discover new meaning, purpose, and ways of seeing the world.

Resilience isn't about never struggling. It's about recognizing when something isn't working, adjusting course, and remaining open to new possibilities.

Read the full blog here: https://www.drlauragoorin.com/ponderings-of-a-flexibility-mindset/

I hope it offers encouragement to anyone navigating change or uncertainty.

Over striking decades of astronomical scientific investigations as a world-renowned trauma researcher, George Bonanno, my prolific graduate school adviser, resilience expert, and the tenderest of friends, found that resilience is the predominant response to potential trauma across copious samples wo...

07/14/2026

In a world that can feel "bruised and bleeding," I've been reflecting on a question that feels more important than ever: How do we continue to cultivate hope, resilience, and meaning?

My latest blog explores the psychology and biology of awe, drawing on the work of Toni Morrison, Dacher Keltner, Andrea Weber, and Maria Popova. I reflect on Keltner's Eight Wonders of Life: moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spirituality, life and death, and epiphanies, and how these experiences can help us build resilience and find meaning.

🔗 Read the full blog here: https://www.drlauragoorin.com/musings-on-awe-and-the.../

Awe doesn't erase suffering, but it can transform the way we hold it. It reminds us that even amid uncertainty, we remain connected to something larger than ourselves.

Whether it's witnessing an act of kindness, standing in nature, listening to music, or sharing a meaningful moment with others, awe has the power to shift our perspective.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.

07/06/2026

Fifteen years since Amy Winehouse's death, I rewatched the documentary "Amy" and found myself thinking not just about addiction, but about denial.

Her most famous lyric, "they tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no," is one of the most defiant refusals in pop history. It's the opposite of what I think of as Radical Acceptance: the difficult, ongoing choice to accept reality exactly as it is, not as we wish it were.

Her father's line, "my daddy thinks I'm fine," speaks to a different kind of denial: the people around her who couldn't, or wouldn't, accept how much danger she was in.

The most haunting moment? Sober at the Grammys, having just won, she calls it "boring." That's the cruelty of addiction; it flattens even our best moments.

Full piece here: https://www.drlauragoorin.com/what-amy-winehouse-taught-the-world-about-radical-acceptance/

Her story is a reminder to notice our own "no no no" moments and to listen more closely to the people who love us enough to tell us the truth.

In honor of 20 years since Amy Winehouse's calamitous death by alcohol poisoning at age 27, I rewatched “Amy,” the British documentary that I believe was the most tender examination into the deeply soulful star with a voice for days. Grasped through old video footage and heartrending dialogues c...

06/25/2026

Big news: I'm now on Substack! 🎉

I'll be sharing writing on mental health, anxiety, trauma & relationships.

I'd love for you to subscribe and join me there!

🔗

Bilingual Clinical Psychologist (PhD) | Owner, Private Practice | Co-Founder, The Feelings Collective | Adjunct Professor, Columbia University & NYU | Anxiety, Trauma, Loss & Relationships | NYC & Telehealth

06/22/2026

Some songs don't just play, they rip through you.

I call them "Summer Screamer Songs." The ones where rage, loss, or joy crescendo into something that cracks you open. Janis Joplin. Chavela Vargas. Bessie Smith. Mahalia Jackson.

But why those songs? Why that feeling?

In my latest piece, I explore how music can act as a form of catharsis, helping us release joy, grief, longing, rage, and everything in between. Drawing from attachment theory, certain songs become our safe haven, secure base, or even mirrors of our deepest relationships.

Summer is when this is most felt. It's the season of collective joy and quiet loneliness, sometimes in the same afternoon.

🎵 Explore the Full piece & 25-song playlist here: https://www.drlauragoorin.com/summer-playlist-screamer-songs-and-the-ethology-of-catharsis-on-our-attachment-systems/

What's your ultimate Summer Screamer song?