Florence de Lavalette is a licensed clinical social worker, with degrees in Nursing and Counseling. 

In private practice since 1986, her work has covered a number of areas including family, relationships, self-esteem, work and performance related issues, as well as anxiety, depression, and stress management.

Her fifteen years as staff counselor at New York University’s counseling center has deepened her understanding of some of the developmental challenges met by young adults as they are pressed ever more rapidly into a depressed economic workforce.

Raised and educated in France as well as the United States, Florence is bilingual in French and English, comfortably conversant in Spanish.  Her integration of Latin as well as Anglo-Saxon culture has broadened her understanding of the diverse beliefs,  customs and values underlying human needs and behaviors.

Florence’s long time interest in promoting and nurturing physical, psychological, and spiritual well being has led her to a particular focus on stress and its negative impact on physical and emotional health.  She has explored a number of tried and true stress reduction methods, completing training programs in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the University of Massachusetts’ Center for Mindfulness under the direction of Jon Kabat-Zinn Ph.D; and  Eliciting the Relaxation Response with Herbert Benson MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.