Hi, I’m Crystal Tholany MD. I aim to help individuals find relief from suffering and improve their well-being.

How It All Began

I remember the moment I felt like I’d found my place — during my psychiatry rotation in medical school nearly twenty years ago. Learning about people’s thoughts, emotions, and life stories came naturally. I was deeply moved by the process of connecting with people and trying to understand what shaped them. It resonated in a way no other medical experience had.

Looking back, this way of thinking wasn’t new. I recently found journal entries from when I was seven — even then, I was wondering why my mind worked the way it did.

Early Exploration of Mindfulness

Before I formally discovered my love for psychiatry, I had already started exploring therapeutic techniques. During a stressful time in med school, I stumbled upon autogenic progressive muscle relaxation — it became a daily practice. I was amazed by how it helped with sleep and stress.

A similar search during the early part of my residency opened the door more broadly to mindfulness in its various forms. Again, I was struck by its power.

Diving into Therapy Training

In the second half of residency, I gravitated toward outpatient therapy and signed up for every elective I could: group and family therapy, DBT, CBT, psychodynamic therapy, and transference-focused psychotherapy.

I was passionate about learning therapy — and especially about understanding what made people the way they were. Still, my most profound training came from starting my own therapy with a psychoanalyst. It was life-changing.

Psychoanalysis and Beyond

After residency, I pursued a fellowship in addiction psychiatry and began formal psychoanalytic training at what was then NYU Psychoanalytic and is now the Psychoanalytic Association of New York. That training — along with my ongoing personal analysis — has been deeply transformative.

Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically-informed psychodynamic therapy remain central to how I work.

But I’ve never stopped seeking out new modalities, especially when something feels like it’s missing. That’s how I found Internal Family Systems (IFS), which offered a profoundly useful model of the mind. (Interestingly, I later encountered psychoanalytic theories that echoed many IFS-like concepts.)

Today, my psychoanalytic approach aligns most closely with post-Bionian Field Theory. Still, I draw from everything I’ve learned. Our minds are dynamic — we shift from moment to moment — so having a wide range of tools allows me to meet those shifting needs in a flexible, personalized way.

How I Work Today: Core Principles

Over the past 16 years, I’ve worked with clients across a wide range of treatment modalities. Each person I've worked with, and every experience along the way, has shaped my current therapeutic style. These guiding principles are at the heart of my work:

1. Therapy is a co-created space

It exists between client and therapist — both shape and are shaped by it. In that back-and-forth, we find words for experiences that may have never been spoken. The story expands in depth and nuance.

2. Feeling fully is healing

When we access the full range of our emotions without judgment, shutting down, or over-intellectualizing, relief often follows. Feelings don’t define us — and they aren’t permanent.

3. The mind is made of parts

Each part has its own thoughts, feelings, access to memories, and physiological responses. When we foster communication between these parts, we experience greater harmony and well-being.