Dr. Dani Kurlander

Dr. Kurlander is a licensed clinical psychologist who is passionate about helping her patients, and often their caregivers, move forward successfully and fulfillingly—even when faced with challenges resulting from chronic illness, devastating injury and loss, or serious mental health conditions.

She brings her innate ebullience, compassion, and resourcefulness to creating a warm, safe space in which to explore together past developments or traumas, present realities, and future possibilities. Her approach draws on her background in integrative health, her expertise in utilizing evidence-based therapeutic approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), CBT for Chronic Pain (CBT-CP), CBT for Psychosis (CBTp), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – Insomnia (CBT-I) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and her natural problem-solving, “let’s figure it out” orientation. Sessions engage her clients in a collaborative process that often feels similar to the process of putting together a puzzle. Her questions and suggestions offer an outline and the pieces; her guidance suggests starting points. She provides encouragement and support all along the way as clients reach their own “Aha! moments”— when the pieces come together, in effect, as essential connections concerning the what and why of the past and present are made, and a bigger, more promising picture of “what’s next” comes into focus.

Dr. Kurlander enjoys working with adults of all ages as well as adolescents and children. Most recently, she has worked as a staff psychologist and as a member of teams delivering pain psychology and cognitive rehabilitation services with Veterans Affairs Medical Centers in New Jersey and California. In these roles she has provided individual and group care for individuals with challenges including neurological conditions, orthopedic conditions, loss of mobility and function, polytrauma, co-occurring substance use disorders and medical conditions, sleep challenges, anger, anxiety and depression. She previously provided psychotherapeutic and rehabilitation services for adults with serious, persistent mental illness and co-occurring medical challenges at an inpatient long-term care facility; individual and group psychotherapy for adolescent males in a residential treatment facility; and trauma-informed care and strengths-based approaches enabling children to develop emotional awareness and establish positive relationships with self and others. She is the coauthor of professional articles and presentations on approaches to traumatic brain injury, PTSD, neurocognitive challenges, and stress management.

Having earned her B.A. in Psychology from Rutgers University, where she served in various leadership roles, she earned her M.A. in Clinical Psychology and Psy.D in Clinical Psychology with Integrated Health Emphasis from California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University.

Dr. Kurlander is licensed in New Jersey and able to practice in all PSYPACT states.