Licensed to practice in 6 states. Specializes in Couples Counseling, Parenting, Sex Therapy and 10 more.
(he/him)
Clients say this provider is
I'm Dr. Ehsan Adib Shabahang, founder of AtReef Therapy PLLC and a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and National Certified Counselor based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I hold a PhD in Psychology with a concentration in social psychology and a master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. My practice provides integrative, depth-oriented therapy for couples and individuals, conducted entirely through secure telehealth. I work most often with high-achieving adults and couples who function well professionally but find themselves facing patterns that intelligence, success, or effort alone have not resolved: recurring conflict, emotional distance, perfectionism, burnout, anxiety, and questions about identity, meaning, and direction. My clinical approach draws on relational and depth psychology, Jungian psychology, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and Gottman Method Couples Therapy, integrated according to each client's needs rather than applied as a fixed protocol. I am also the developer of Self-Reflective Relationship Therapy (SRRT), a research-informed framework that emphasizes self-reflection, emotional responsibility, and translating insight into real behavioral change. Therapy with me is not only about understanding why a pattern exists. Insight matters, but it is not the goal on its own. I focus equally on what changes in your communication, boundaries, emotional regulation, and decisions once that understanding is in place. I see couples working through betrayal, disconnection, and recurring cycles of conflict, and I see individuals navigating anxiety, burnout, identity transitions, and the gap between a capable public self and a more uncertain private one. I also bring particular attention to intercultural relationships and cross-cultural identity, informed by my own doctoral research and background working across cultures. If you are looking for a therapist who will engage directly, take your patterns seriously, and hold you accountable to real change rather than surface-level coping strategies, I would be glad to work with you.
Your first session at AtReef Therapy typically follows a free 30-minute consultation, where we've already talked briefly about what's bringing you to therapy and whether we seem like a good fit. The first full session goes deeper. For individuals, that usually means walking through your history, current concerns, and what you're hoping therapy will change, whether that's anxiety, burnout, a relationship pattern, or a bigger question about identity or direction. For couples, I spend time understanding each partner's perspective, the history of the relationship, and the specific patterns of conflict, distance, or disconnection that brought you in. You won't leave the first session with everything solved, and I won't pretend otherwise. What you should leave with is a clearer, more specific picture of the pattern we're actually working with, not just the surface complaint, and a working sense of how I approach treatment: integrative, depth-oriented, and focused on translating insight into real change. Sessions are conducted through secure video, so you can do this from wherever you're located in Massachusetts. By the end of that first session, most clients have a concrete sense of what the next several sessions will focus on and what meaningful progress would actually look like for them.
My clinical background is unusually integrative, which is one of my biggest strengths in session. I combine relational and depth-oriented psychotherapy, informed by Jungian psychology, with structured, evidence-based approaches: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and Gottman Method Couples Therapy. In practice, that means sessions move between understanding why a pattern exists and building the actual skills to change it: communication, boundaries, emotional regulation, conflict repair, and trust rebuilding. Clients do not leave with insight alone. I work especially well with clients who are used to being capable: high-achieving professionals, executives, and couples who can analyze a problem clearly but have found that intelligence and effort alone have not resolved it. That includes recurring conflict, emotional disconnection, infidelity and betrayal, perfectionism, chronic pressure and burnout, anxiety, and difficulty with vulnerability and intimacy. I bring the same intellectual rigor they apply elsewhere in their lives directly into the therapy room, along with a willingness to name what I see plainly rather than soften it or talk around it. My background as a cultural advisor and diplomatic liaison, together with my doctoral research on cross-cultural relationships, gives me particular strength working with intercultural and cross-cultural couples, and with individuals navigating identity, belonging, and family expectations across cultures. I am multilingual in English, Persian, and Dari, and I bring that same cultural fluency into how I understand each client's context rather than applying a single template to every relationship. I also keep my caseload at AtReef Therapy PLLC intentionally small. That is a decision about depth, not availability: every client and every couple gets my full clinical attention, session to session, rather than being one of many. Sessions are held through secure telehealth, and every new client starts with a free 30-minute consultation before committing to ongoing work.
My ideal client is a high-achieving adult or couple who is used to solving problems through intelligence, effort, and competence, and who has run into something that approach hasn't fixed: a relationship pattern that keeps repeating, a level of burnout or anxiety that won't respond to willpower, or a sense of disconnection from a partner or from themselves that success hasn't resolved. These are clients and couples who are professionally capable, often high-functioning on the outside, but privately aware that something underneath needs real attention rather than another surface-level fix. What matters most is mindset. I work best with people who are willing to look at themselves honestly, including the parts of a pattern they contribute to, and who want more than temporary relief. That might mean a couple working through betrayal, emotional distance, or a recurring conflict cycle, an individual navigating perfectionism, anxiety, or a major life transition, or someone in an intercultural relationship trying to understand identity and connection across real differences. My ideal client wants depth, direct engagement, and measurable change in how they think, communicate, and act, not just a place to talk.
I use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to identify the specific thoughts, interpretations, and behavioral patterns that keep problems like anxiety, perfectionism, self-criticism, and relationship conflict in place. In session, this usually means slowing down a recurring situation, a deadline that triggers panic, an argument that escalates the same way every time, and examining the automatic thought or belief driving the reaction rather than the reaction itself. For clients dealing with anxiety, overthinking, or chronic pressure, CBT gives us a structured way to test whether a thought is accurate or just familiar, and to build more workable responses in its place. I don't use CBT as a standalone protocol. I integrate it with the relational and depth-oriented work I do, so cognitive patterns are examined alongside the emotional and relational history that produced them. The goal is always the same: translating insight about a thought pattern into an observable change in behavior, communication, or decision-making, not just recognizing the pattern and stopping there.
I draw on Dialectical Behavior Therapy principles primarily for emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness, skills that matter for clients dealing with chronic stress, burnout, reactivity in relationships, or difficulty staying grounded during conflict. With individual clients, this might mean building concrete tools for tolerating a high-pressure moment at work without shutting down or overreacting. With couples, it often shows up in helping each partner regulate themselves enough during a hard conversation that the conversation can actually go somewhere, rather than repeating the same escalation or withdrawal pattern. DBT's dialectical stance, holding two things as true at once, such as accepting where you are while still working to change it, fits naturally with how I think about most of the presenting concerns I see: the anxiety is real and it is addressable, the pattern is understandable and it is changeable. I use DBT skills as tools within a broader relational and depth-oriented framework rather than as a full standalone treatment model.
Gottman Method Couples Therapy is a core part of how I assess and treat couples at AtReef Therapy. I use it to evaluate the specific patterns underlying a relationship's conflict, friendship, and repair, things like how partners manage disagreement, how they respond to each other's bids for connection, and how much trust and goodwill exists as a buffer during hard moments. This gives couples work a research-informed structure rather than relying only on what happens to come up in a given session. In practice, I use Gottman-informed interventions for recurring conflict cycles, communication breakdowns, emotional distance, and rebuilding trust after betrayal or infidelity, alongside the deeper relational and depth-oriented exploration of why those patterns developed in the first place. I don't treat Gottman Method as a fixed script. I integrate it with my broader clinical approach, including my own framework, Self-Reflective Relationship Therapy, so couples get both the structured, evidence-based tools Gottman research supports and a more personal, reflective examination of what each partner brings to the pattern.
Jungian psychology informs the depth-oriented side of my clinical work, particularly with clients and couples dealing with identity, meaning, inner conflict, and patterns that seem to repeat despite insight or effort. I use Jungian concepts to help clients look at what's happening beneath the presenting problem: the tension between a person's public, capable self and a more uncertain private one, unconscious patterns that keep showing up in relationships, or the parts of the self a person has learned to suppress in order to function or achieve. This is especially relevant for high-achieving clients who can solve most problems analytically but find that intellect alone hasn't resolved a recurring relational or emotional pattern. I don't use Jungian work in isolation. I integrate it with more structured approaches like CBT and Gottman Method, so depth-oriented exploration of identity and unconscious patterns stays connected to observable change in a client's relationships, decisions, and daily life, rather than remaining purely interpretive.
Mindfulness shows up in my work primarily through two channels rather than as a separate, freestanding protocol: the mindfulness component of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and the emphasis on self-reflection and present-moment awareness that is central to Self-Reflective Relationship Therapy, the framework I developed. In practice, this means helping clients notice their emotional and physiological state in the moment, during a hard conversation with a partner, in the middle of a spike of anxiety, before an old pattern of overcontrol or withdrawal takes over, rather than only examining it after the fact. For couples, that same present-moment awareness helps each partner recognize what they're doing in a conflict as it's happening, which is often the first step toward interrupting the pattern instead of just understanding it afterward.
3 ratings with written reviews
May 26, 2025
In the few sessions I’ve had it has been very good to help with issues I’ve been dealing with and helping me to see real solutions for things. I appreciate being heard and have feedback during our sessions.
May 19, 2025
Ehsan is a good guide. He balances method and flexibility. He sets a therapeutic boundary while projecting compassion and care. He is a very helpful clinician. I feel respected in this partnership.
February 24, 2025
I enjoyed his warm and friendly demeanor.