Kessler Psychological, LLC
Kessler Psychological, LLC
Psychotherapy and Evaluation Services
Norfolk, VA
Dr. Lena S. Kessler is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist experienced in working with clients of all ages and with many different mental health struggles. She generally approaches psychotherapy by helping clients to identify and challenge distorted beliefs as well as understand their origins, and to learn how to identify and tolerate emotions (recognizing they're not enemies). She creatively crafts interventions to fit the needs of the client, and has successfully been using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for a few years now. She practices with compassion and highly professional boundaries.
My Story
Hello.
I'm a licensed clinical psychologist with experience working across the full spectrum of mental health concerns, from long-standing struggles to short-term crises. My approach to therapy is centered on helping people reconnect with their strongest, wisest, and most grounded selves.
Over the years, I've become convinced that every person has a core of strength, resilience, and calm within them. For some people it's easy to access; for others, it's been buried under years of stress, pain, self-doubt, or simply the wear and tear of being human. The good news is that there are effective, evidence-based ways of helping people reconnect with that part of themselves.I know that starting therapy can feel intimidating.
​
Before people begin, it often seems like everything is too complicated, too tangled, or too overwhelming to sort out. But once the process gets underway, many people discover that healing is not nearly as mysterious or distressing as it first appeared. In fact, the most important resources for healing are already present within you. Because of that, therapy doesn't have to be an agonizing process. Relief, clarity, and growth don't necessarily arrive through suffering. More often, they come from learning how to access capacities that have been there all along but have become obscured by the burdens that life inevitably places on us. You are more okay than you know … and there are ways of reconnecting with what has always been there but clouded by the burdens of life. Even on the darkest days, with the thickest clouds, the sun is still shining just as bright behind the clouds. Same goes for you. One thing I've learned is that people frequently mistake themselves for the burdens they carry. We begin to believe that we are our anxiety, our shame, our self-criticism, our fears, or our old wounds. But these experiences are not who we are. They are things we carry. And because they are things we carry, they can be understood, healed, and gradually released.
​
I also happen to believe that therapy—and the process of becoming more connected within yourself—should not feel like an endless slog through emotional quicksand. There may be difficult moments along the way, but the overall experience should bring increasing clarity, relief, and self-understanding. If therapy is feeling like anguish … you might need a different approach. Instead, I see therapy as helping people develop better relationships with the many different parts of themselves. Essentially, it's about building friendships with all the fascinating, complicated, and sometimes exasperating facets of who you are—even the ones that initially seem anything but friendly. Especially those ones, actually.
These ideas are central to Internal Family Systems (IFS), the primary model that guides my work. IFS has helped me make sense of both human resilience and human suffering, and it offers a practical, compassionate path toward lasting relief and greater harmony within ourselves.
About Dr. Kohn:
Dr. Kohn was born and raised in Virginia and earned his bachelor's degree in Psychology from Old Dominion University. He later attended Florida Institute of Technology, where he completed both his master's degree and doctorate in Clinical Psychology. After graduate school, he returned to his beloved Norfolk to complete his internship at Eastern Virginia Medical School. During a rotation at Eastern State Hospital, he discovered a particular passion for working at the complex intersection of serious mental illness and forensic psychology. That experience led to a rewarding career at Eastern State Hospital, working with individuals adjudicated Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. Over time, he advanced to the role of Forensic Coordinator, a position he held for more than a decade.
Eventually, Dr. Kohn made the difficult decision to leave a public mental health system that he had devoted much of his career to. While remaining deeply appreciative of the important work being done within that system, the deep flaws within that system led to too many never-ending battles, and he found himself increasingly drawn to a form of practice that allowed for deeper and more individualized therapeutic work.
He subsequently joined the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he provided psychotherapy to veterans facing a wide range of challenges, from everyday struggles to severe and complex trauma-related conditions. Working with veterans only deepened his belief in the remarkable resilience people possess and the capacity of therapy to help individuals reconnect with the strength, wisdom, and clarity that already exist within them.
Dr. Kohn rejects approaches that view people primarily through the lens of pathology or diagnosis. Instead, he embraces a person-centered, strength-based model of growth and healing. His work is grounded in the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, and he has completed Level 2 training in IFS.
​
​