Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep # 137 Talk Therapy Transforms Lives Beyond the Traditional Couch
Ever wondered what makes therapy actually work? Dr. Kaley Gerstley peels back the curtain on the therapeutic relationship that drives healing in our conversation on the Good Neighbor Podcast. With her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and over a decade in mental health, Dr. Gerstley brings both expertise and warmth to a profession that's rapidly evolving.
The pandemic transformed Dr. Gerstley's practice in unexpected ways. Though she once believed she'd work in-office her entire career, COVID pushed her practice online—and the results surprised everyone. Her clients' attendance improved dramatically without commuting barriers, and they unanimously chose to continue virtually when given the option to return in-person. This shift reflects broader changes in how we approach mental wellness in today's world.
At the heart of Dr. Gerstley's approach is what she calls the "relational framework"—the understanding that healing happens primarily through authentic connection. Unlike more formulaic therapeutic approaches, this relationship-centered method creates a space where clients can practice difficult conversations and experience healthy interactions that model what's possible in their everyday relationships. Dr. Gerstley works primarily with adults navigating life transitions, performers (particularly opera singers), and women dealing with body image concerns.
Perhaps most encouraging is how therapy has evolved from the Woody Allen analyst stereotype to something mainstream—where Olympic athletes openly discuss their mental health support before winning gold medals. This cultural shift has made therapy more accessible, though building meaningful community connections remains challenging in our increasingly isolated world. As Dr. Gerstley notes, helping clients build those vital connections has become a cornerstone of her work.
Ready to explore what therapy might look like for you? Visit talktherapywithkaylee.com to learn more about Dr. Gerstley's virtual practice serving New York and New Jersey residents.
Talk Therapy with Kaley
Dr. Kaley Gerstley
hello@talktherapywithkaley.com
(201) 514-6379
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by the Bergen Neighbors Media Group. Today we are going to talk some therapy with Dr Kaley Gerstley. Dr Kaley is a licensed clinical social worker that's what the LCSW you see after her name represents and she provides virtual therapy to clients and we'll dig into that in New York and New Jersey. She earned her master's degree from Tulane down in New Orleans, and her doctorate back in Pennsylvania, the University of Pennsylvania. So with over a decade of experience working in the mental health field, I think it's great that we can have this discussion about what talk therapy is all about. So, dr Caley, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so over a decade of experience working in the mental health field. How long has your practice been in existence and where did you work before that, like when you graduated?
Speaker 3:So I have had a private practice since probably around 2017, 2018. Okay, but prior to that, well, I started my career a million years ago in New Orleans. Prior to that, well, I started my career a million years ago in New Orleans and when I was in grad school, I had an internship in an adolescent psychiatric hospital, and that's really how I got started in mental health work. So I worked in an adolescent psych hospital in New Orleans and then, when I moved to New York, I worked at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for several years on an acute psychiatric unit so with folks experiencing sort of the more extreme end of mental health struggles and then, from there, I switched to working in a community mental health clinic at Henry Street Settlement House, also in the city, while simultaneously starting my practice and going for the doctorate.
Speaker 2:So have you always been virtual or did that come out? No?
Speaker 3:that started with COVID. If you had asked me prior to COVID I would have said I would have been in office for the rest of my life. But COVID happened. You know, being in the New York city area, nobody really wanted to come in person, which is fair and totally understandable. And then all my clients ended up really liking the virtual therapy. My no-show rate dropped significantly. People stopped canceling because of delayed trains or weather and everybody started coming more consistently and everybody loves it. And then I asked my clients a few months into COVID if they wanted to go back to in-person or if they wanted to stick with virtual. They said stick with the virtual. So I gave up my office and have been doing virtual since.
Speaker 2:Wow, now do you find it? I guess it's not more difficult to show like empathy and you know, as you say, like you know, showing up with empathy and authenticity. You don't find that the Zoom, the computer, is a barrier to that.
Speaker 3:I think that it changes things for sure. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a barrier to showing up or to empathy. I think it honestly levels the playing field a little bit more and because clients are now in their space right, they're in a place where they feel comfortable, they're in control of the temperature, they can make sure they have their favorite drink or their favorite snack ready and they don't feel like they're coming into my space where I am the expert. It's more of a conversation where we can just chat with one another and I can help them realize that they are the expert in their own life and I'm just here to help them achieve whatever they want to.
Speaker 2:Right Now you talked about the relational framework approach, so what is that exactly?
Speaker 3:So a relational approach is pretty much just acknowledging that the majority of healing is going to come from the relationship between the therapist and the client. It's saying that the work that we do here, the relationship that we build, is what's going to help you get to the point that you want to be in your life, help you feel happier, help you feel calmer. I often talk about the therapeutic relationship or your relationship with your therapist as sort of a modeling relationship. It can help you practice how to have hard conversations. It can help you sort of be the introduction to how to have a healthy relationship with somebody. It's obviously a different type of relationship than a friendship or a romantic relationship or a familial relationship, but it can sort of lay the groundwork to help people understand how we can communicate in relationships, how we can show up for one another in relationships and use it as a practice ground to then bring into their everyday life.
Speaker 2:So is that different from traditional therapy when somebody meets with a therapist, is that not? I mean, is that not typically how it works, where you go to see a therapist and there's this you know back and forth and kind of you know relationship between the therapist being, you know, helping, guiding you, and you as the patient, you know having to do some of the work, I guess, on your own. So how is it different from what other therapy practices are like, or traditional practices?
Speaker 3:So it is based in traditional therapy. Therapy practices are like or traditional practices, so it is based in traditional therapy, but there's all different kinds of therapy. So, for example, if you do EMDR, that's not to say that you won't have a relationship with your therapist.
Speaker 3:I also have gone through extensive EMDR training. It's not to say that you won't have a relationship with your therapist, but it's more formulaic. You go, you've got something that you're specifically identified working on, some trauma that you've specifically identified working on, and then there's sort of a formula for the therapy into how it's supposed to take place. If you're doing CBT, you might be getting some homework, you might be getting some charts, some things to fill out. They all are relational in nature. Relationship is sort of a piece of it, but for me it's sort of the center of it and I'll bring in some of those other tools and utilize CBT and utilize EMDR, but it's not the center of the work that we do.
Speaker 2:Right, and just to clarify, I mean CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy. Cogn.
Speaker 3:Then, uh, you know the other, I know it's eye movement emdr yeah, it stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing, and it's a really phenomenal way to treat trauma. It's really great. It's one of the new new not new, but newer forms of therapy that people are really excited about, but it is different than traditional talk therapy and that you go in and it's you're getting what's called bilateral stimulation.
Speaker 3:So sometimes that's a light that's moving from one side of a screen to the next, or it might be tapping on one side of your body, the next or, in today's day and age, a lot of people use headphones and it'll play like a sound in one ear and then a sound in the next ear, to have your brain working with both sides of the brain simultaneously as you're processing the trauma that you're going through or that you have gone through got it, but with you, obviously the name of your company is talk therapy with kaylee, so it's you're focusing on on the talk side of things, not yeah yeah you talk in the mdr and cbt too, but it's less structured right, right, right.
Speaker 2:So why did you become a therapist? Like? What was it that? Um, you know, at what point in your life did you, you know, were you already in school and and took some classes, or was it before you even went to college that you decided to go this route?
Speaker 3:It was after school.
Speaker 3:I probably should have known in college.
Speaker 3:I majored in college in anthropology, which is not really much that you can do with that outside of teaching in the traditional sense, but majored in anthropology and I remember a meeting with my advisor in my senior year telling me that I needed another elective, but it couldn't be a social work elective because I had taken too many of those. So that probably should have been an indicator that I was going to go into social work at one point in time or another, but it didn't hit me until a year or two later. I was teaching in a preschool. We had kids with all different abilities in our class and there was a social worker who came in to work with one of my kids who had some special needs and I loved the work that she was doing with him and really was inspired and decided I wanted to go back to school to work with kids who needed more support as a social worker so I went to social work school with the intention of working in early childhood and then have not worked in early childhood a day since.
Speaker 3:So when I was there, you're required in graduate school to do a practicum, a field placement where you sort of have real work experience. And I had wanted to do that in the early childhood supports and services, the Louisiana version of early intervention, but that entire program got shut down the day before I was supposed to start. So the next best choice that they had for me where I would still work with kids was in the adolescent psychiatric unit. So I went to the adolescent psychiatric unit at Children's Hospital in New Orleans and I loved it. So I went to the adolescent psychiatric unit at Children's Hospital in New Orleans and I loved it. It was certainly not working in early childhood, but it was working with kids and it was working in mental health and I loved it.
Speaker 3:And then I came to New York and applied to work at Bellevue in the adolescent psychiatric unit and when I went for the interview they said how do you feel about working with adults?
Speaker 2:And I said it's not something I ever thought I would do, but I'm open to it and I've never gone back to working with kids, so you don't work with the adolescents, I don't.
Speaker 3:I do adults only now.
Speaker 2:Okay, Okay. So what is so? How have things changed since you started? You know back, you know before 2020, like, in terms of the issues that your clients come to you with, has it been pretty much the same, or have things changed since COVID? Or is it naturally that stresses in lives changes as society evolves? Like, what have you seen in the last 10 years? Has there been a big change in what people come to you with versus 2017?
Speaker 3:There's definitely a big change. I think that therapy has become much more mainstream, which is really beautiful and something that I love to see. I think that one of the misconceptions people have about therapy is it's really only for people who are mentally unwell or sick or some of those sort of negative stereotypes that we think about when we think about therapy. And in the last 10 years it's everybody's talking about therapy, right Like you can go to dinner and hear the table next to you talking about the advice that their therapist gave them, about single women living in New York City.
Speaker 3:There's a million and one things that you'll hear people talking about therapy with, and that is a beautiful thing that I think came about largely because of the pandemic and what we are all sort of collectively experiencing yeah, growing up you know it was like woody allen had an analyst.
Speaker 2:I think they called them back then you know, some sigmund freud kind of let me lay on the couch kind of thing. But I think you know woody allen didn't give it a good reputation because Woody Allen's messed up. That guy's got a lot of hang-ups. But I know he was one of the first in pop culture that would openly talk about seeing his psychiatrist. I guess it was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and now we've gone from that to Simone Biles at the Olympics, openly meditating and talking about how she had a session with her therapist before winning gold Right. Like that sort of shift that we've made, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean I think with athletes having a sports coach, you know, mental coach is something that's a little bit more mainstream.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think it's the same to athletes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, I don't think it's great to athletes, yeah, so getting so sorry, getting back to you know how it's changed over the years and what people are dealing with, is it?
Speaker 2:You know? I know I've spoken to a lot of therapists that deal with teens and COVID was really detrimental in a lot of their you know their psychic, psychic well-beings when it came to, you know, mental health and dealing with COVID and being shut in and shut out of school and things like that. But I know adults have to deal with things as well, whether it was having to manage the kids that are going through that or just your own career. And, like you were saying, you know we're no longer commuting and I think you know I had the benefit of working in Manhattan for 25 some odd years and and had the great social network of being able to go out after work and, and you know, play on sports teams and things like that, and I think that's really missing in young adults and even maybe people my age that don't do that anymore. Do you see that as like an issue when it comes to people dealing with anxiety or just any kind of mental health issues? Is that something that they miss or they don't even realize that they miss?
Speaker 3:Absolutely the community building which I think is what you're really talking about Having a community, having a network, having people that you see outside of your everyday hustle. Nine to five work life, managing the kids, managing whatever responsibilities you might have. That ability to build a network, a community of people that you can rely on, that can mutually support each other, is absolutely influencing the way that people are experiencing life and the anxiety levels.
Speaker 3:A big part of what I do with my clients is work on community building working on getting them connected to resources, connected to people in their lives that maybe they've grown more distant from or haven't been as connected to. But absolutely, isolation is a huge thing that I talk about with my clients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one of the great benefits of being in Manhattan and New York City when you work and I worked in the media industry, so I was in the music industry and then TV, but any industry, the diversity of people, the diversity of thought, the diversity of backgrounds, really, you know, helps you in being more tolerant and understanding other points of view. And I think now it's so easy to be siloed, to just be fed the same information over and over again, and you know I could see how that that could lead to a lot of anxiety, because who wants to turn on the news, depending on what side you're on? You know it's. It's just you're not getting that. Um, as you said, community thought of seeing things from a different perspective and say, okay, I understand that, I can be empathetic to that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're losing a lot of the nuance.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Which is a lot of what we talk about in therapy, right, the differences, the nuance, sort of the gray and not so much the black and white.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So what are their specific? Like I notice, you know there's some therapy practices. They'll go through a list of services. You know we do X, y and Z, but you don't do that, right, you're basic.
Speaker 3:It's me and somebody else.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:I do one-on-one individual therapy with adults, virtually. I work with strangely enough, I work with a lot of performers. I have a lot of opera singers on my caseload specifically and I work with a lot of people going through life transitions. So divorces, breakups, new job, new school, new kids, you know any sort of thing that might make a big change. During COVID I worked with a lot of people who are transitioning out of New York City and the big flux of folks moving to Bergen County, so a lot of life transitions. I do a lot of work with women struggling with body image. That's a big part of what I do now. Okay and yeah, but it's, it's just me and whatever you want to bring to me right.
Speaker 2:And then I notice, um well, how would people contact you? And they can reach you if they want to just have a, a consultation, just to kind of feel things out like how does it work?
Speaker 3:um, they can shoot me an email through my website. It's uh, talk therapy with kayleecom, so it's pretty straightforward. Go to the website, all my contact information is there. They can email me directly through the website and it's just me, so I'll be responding to them directly.
Speaker 2:Got it, got it. So one of the things I ask people of all different um walks of life who come on the show or business owners is what is it like being a business owner? Because obviously you went to school, um, you know you studied to be a licensed clinical social worker. No one taught you to be an accountant or marketer or business manager. So what has that been like running your own business? And you know people described as a roller coaster. They described you know the ups and downs, but then inevitably say I can never go back to working for someone else, regardless of the challenges and maybe the tough days, because you know, let's be honest, we have tough days whether we work for ourselves or work for someone else. So what has the experience been like for you?
Speaker 3:I will say that being a therapist has never been challenging, but being a business owner has been continuously challenging. I did not go to school for marketing. I did not go to school to run my own business. I went to school to become a therapist. So the business side of things has been a very, a pretty steep learning curve just figuring out marketing, figuring out how to get people through the door. I know that once they're in the door I can do great work with them.
Speaker 3:It's just getting them to see my face and know that I'm out there. But the business side of things is the hardest part.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, one of the reasons we have this show is for people to find out who you are, you know, to understand the you behind the name. You know, when I was at Viacom, we had a. We were big on branding, right, everything was about brands SpongeBob or Nickelodeon or Dora the Explorer, south Park and things like that. But when it came to personal development, we had a, I guess like a class it was a number of over a period of months called Brand U, y-o-u, and it was about building your own personal brand, because a lot of us don't understand that when you work for a big corporation, you still have to sell yourself if you want to move up the corporate ladder. And a lot of us were not good at it. And it was understanding what my brand is and how do people see me, how do I walk into the room.
Speaker 2:And the purpose of this podcast is for people to understand the you, the person behind the name. Uh, because you know, I think, if they really can connect with you that way, like we're talking about community, I think it makes a difference. So I'm, uh, you know, glad to help in that way and I hope, um, you know, I, I think it's, it's under you know, understanding where you came from and why you do. What you do is a lot more. It's a lot deeper than just looking on ZocDocs or something and trying to choose somebody just because of their proximity or oh, you're virtual, okay, why you over someone else? And I really appreciate you sharing all this with us. Let's go back to your website again how would people contact you?
Speaker 3:You can just go straight to my website and go on the talk. Go on the contact form. It is talk therapy with Kayleecom. Kaley is spelled K A L E Y, so talk therapy with Kayleecom and you can reach out directly to me.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, kaley, thank you so much for joining the show today. Chuck is just going to say a few parting words and you and I will be right back.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, no-transcript.