Dr. Micah Zylstra is a clinical psychologist who helps people heal from trauma, depression, grief, and relationship challenges. With a calm, compassionate presence, he offers a safe space for self-understanding and renewed hope. Using an integrative approach—drawing from psychodynamic, CBT, humanistic, and hypnosis techniques—he supports clients in building emotional balance, empowerment, and deeper connection to self and others.
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Dr. Micah Zylstra is a Clinical Psychologist specializing in complex trauma, depression, self-esteem, grief and loss, and relationship difficulties. His approach addresses the multifaceted impacts of trauma—including shame, poor self-concept, emotional dysregulation, and hopelessness—by first cultivating a safe, trusting therapeutic relationship. He helps clients to feel safe within themselves and their bodies while fostering creativity and positive experiences. Dr. Zylstra's work focuses on improving quality of life, relationships, sense of self, and hope for the future.
Dr. Zylstra earned his Bachelor's degree in Religious Studies and Psychology from Michigan State University and his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Adelphi University. His doctoral research examined subjective responses to trauma and COVID-19, including suicidality—a complex phenomenon often involving hopelessness, helplessness, burdensomeness, and social isolation. His dissertation explored how COVID-19-related mortality awareness reactions (e.g., fear of death, feelings of disempowerment) associate with suicide, stress, and grief in young adults.
Dr. Zylstra's clinical training is extensive and diverse, spanning psychoanalytic, cognitive behavioral, and mentalization-based therapies. He completed his predoctoral internship at JCCA's Brooklyn Foster Home Services, where he provided individual and group therapy, consultation, and comprehensive psychological assessments. This experience solidified his skills in addressing the impacts of complex trauma on psychological development, self-concept, mood, and emotional regulation.
Dr. Zylstra's path through diverse clinical settings has informed his integrative practice. He started as an independent living skills instructor at a shelter for at-risk adolescents, then became a behavior specialist working with children displaying aggression due to mental health diagnoses, and later served as Lead Behavior Specialist for a foster care program, where he supervised staff and developed evidence-based trainings on attachment, trauma responses, and de-escalation. After moving to New York City, he gained additional clinical experience as a crisis counselor for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, conducting thousands of assessments and providing client-centered interventions with diverse populations. He was subsequently promoted to Training and Quality Improvement Specialist, overseeing training development and supervision for mental health professionals at various licensure levels.
Dr. Zylstra takes a warm and collaborative approach, working with people who may feel weighed down by past experiences or notice that old wounds still affect their daily lives. He creates a space grounded in safety and honesty, where clients can begin to openly talk about their most difficult experiences and start to make sense of their emotions.By bringing creativity and genuine connection into the process, Dr. Zylstra helps clients rebuild self-esteem, discover healthier ways to cope, and move toward a more hopeful and fulfilling future.
Dr. Zylstra's therapeutic approach combines psychodynamic object relations and mentalization with practical, action-oriented strategies from cognitive behavioral therapy. By exploring how past relationships shape perceptions in the present moment, Dr. Zylstra helps clients uncover patterns that affect their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in day-to-day life. He views therapy as a dialectic between acceptance and change, creating space for what arises authentically in the here and now.
Dr. Zylstra also integrates practical tools and strategies from clinical hypnosis and cognitive behavioral therapy to support clients in making meaningful changes in daily life. He uses clinical hypnosis to help clients develop better emotional regulation and foster new emotional experiences that allow them to access different ways of feeling and being. Once new experiences are felt, significant emphasis is placed on broadening and reinforcing the change in clients' day-to-day life and in their important relationships. The aim is both insightful and actionable change, helping clients translate self-understanding into tangible progress. His emphasis on creating new experiences offers hope that change is possible, even when longstanding patterns feel deeply entrenched.
Dr. Zylstra has pursued additional training in clinical hypnosis, group psychotherapy, and meaning-making therapy to expand his therapeutic toolkit. He also draws from humanistic principles that encourage creativity, honesty, and authenticity in the therapeutic relationship. This diverse training allows him to tailor therapy to each client's individual needs and adapt his approach as those needs evolve.
He combines these integrative techniques with foundational psychodynamic approaches to provide a holistic, personalized therapy experience that addresses multiple aspects of well-being. This comprehensive perspective attends not only to symptoms but to the deeper relational and existential dimensions of clients' lives.
Through this approach, Dr. Zylstra works collaboratively with clients to foster growth, improve coping skills, and support progress toward personal goals. Clients often find themselves feeling more confident and self-aware, building healthier relationships, managing emotions with greater ease, and reconnecting with a deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment.
