About Dr. Elina Cymerman
Dr. Elina Cymerman is a clinical psychologist licensed in Massachusetts. In her busy Boston practice, she provides individual and couples therapy to clients with a range of mental health and life challenges. She has developed expertise in the treatment of depression, anxiety, trauma, and coping with loss. She has also helped many clients struggling with parenting difficulties, medical problems, disconnection in relationships, and caring for family members who are aging, ill, or dealing with addiction.
Relying on more than twenty years of experience, Dr. Cymerman has found that many clients benefit from a two-pronged approach that combines working through past attachment and family issues with developing new coping skills to improve emotional well-being, self-esteem, and stress management. Therapy also targets common self-defeating behaviors like addiction, avoidance, and social isolation that can block people from moving forward in their lives.
Dr. Cymerman’s approach to couples therapy focuses on strengthening emotional and physical connection. It’s common for couples to drift apart over time, especially when managing demands like work, parenting, illness, and financial stress. Cycles of negative interactions can leave people feeling distressed, unappreciated, and alone. Dr. Cymerman’s approach aims to get underneath arguments of the day and address the core issues underlying conflict and disconnection.
In both individual and couples therapy, Dr. Cymerman’s style is warm, collaborative, and direct. She believes the most effective interventions provide clients with a more positive self-concept, tools for improving the health of their relationships, and an increased sense of agency in their lives.
Dr. Cymerman completed her PhD at the University of Chicago in 1999. Much of her work in this program focused on child development. She views this in-depth study of how children become who they are as essential for understanding the mental health, coping, and relationship challenges they face as adults.
Over the next four years, Dr. Cymerman received clinical training in child, adult, family, and couples therapy through Harvard Medical School. She completed internships at McLean Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She then completed advanced clinical fellowships at Children’s Hospital, Boston, and Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates.
Post-licensure, Dr. Cymerman received certification in Traumatic Stress Studies from the Family Institute of Cambridge. She has also completed specialized training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT and Emotion Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT).
In her first position, she served as Clinical Psychologist at Brigham and Women’s hospital. Three years later In 2007, she was hired by Tufts Medical Center as a Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. In this position, Dr. Cymerman provided outpatient therapy and consultation to medical departments throughout the hospital and directed the Adult Psychiatry Resident Clinic.
Dr. Cymerman has been active in teaching and clinician training throughout her career. She served as Adjunct Professor at Lesley University, where she taught the course Developmental Psychology across the Lifespan to graduate students in education. At both Brigham and Women’s and Tufts hospitals, she lectured on effective therapy for depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, she provided clinical supervision to medical school students, psychology and social work interns, and psychiatry residents and fellows. Also at Tufts, she created and ran the Psychotherapy Clinic, designed to model and teach therapy skills to emerging clinicians in social work, psychology, and psychiatry training programs.
Dr. Cymerman started her therapy practice in 2016. She continues to be active in teaching and training, as well as peer mentorship and supervision groups. She is currently a member of The American Psychological Association (APA) and Massachusetts Psychological Association (MPA).
