About Clear Light Therapy

There's a version of your life where your mind isn't your biggest obstacle. Where you wake up without dread already waiting for you. Where food isn't a battle, and quiet doesn't feel dangerous, and you're not constantly bracing for something to go wrong.

That version of your life is not out of reach. But you're not going to get there by thinking harder, trying more, or waiting until things get bad enough to 'deserve' help.

Clear Light Therapy was built for the people who are ready to stop surviving and start actually living and who deserve a team that knows exactly how to help them get there.

Who We Are

Clear Light Therapy is a specialized group practice in Englewood, New Jersey, offering evidence-based treatment for OCD, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and mental wellness. We work with teens and adults, including high-achieving, high-functioning people who look totally fine on the outside but are quietly exhausted on the inside.

We are not a one-size-fits-all practice. Every client receives a personalized treatment plan built around their life, their goals, and the kind of change they're actually looking for. We use therapies that work, not because they sound good, but because the research proves it, delivered with the warmth and realness that makes them land.

Our team serves clients throughout Bergen County and Hudson County in person, and virtually across all of New Jersey including Essex, Morris, Somerset, and Passaic counties.

Meet Our Founder: Dana Colthart, LCSW

Dana Colthart is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder of Clear Light Therapy. She created this practice with a clear vision: that people struggling with OCD, anxiety, and eating disorders deserve specialized, expert care.. not generalist therapy that misses the mark, and not a revolving door of providers who don't truly understand what they're dealing with.

Dana received her Master of Social Work (MSW) degree from Fordham University, one of the nation's leading programs for clinical social work training. Her clinical background spans work with adolescents, adults, and the LGBTQ+ community, with deep expertise in OCD spectrum disorders, anxiety, eating disorders, and relationship concerns. She is trained in the most effective, evidence-based modalities available, including Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

Our Clinical Team

Clear Light Therapy is a growing group practice made up of skilled, compassionate clinicians who share a commitment to evidence-based care and genuine human connection. Our team brings diverse training and backgrounds including graduate training from Fordham University, Rutgers University, and Kean University and specializes in the conditions we treat most.

Every therapist on our team is trained in at least one evidence-based modality for OCD, anxiety, or eating disorders. We do not take a generalist approach. When you come to Clear Light Therapy, you are matched with a clinician who genuinely specializes in what you're going through.

Our clinicians hold licensure as Licensed Clinical Social Workers (LCSW) and Licensed Professional Counselors (LPC) in the state of NJ, PA, MD, MA, VA and DC.

OCD & Anxiety: When Your Mind Won't Let You Rest

OCD is not about being neat. It's a cycle of intrusive thoughts that feel terrifying and compulsions or mental rituals that promise relief, but never actually deliver it. The more you try to fight the thoughts or make them go away, the louder they get.

You might be struggling with OCD if you:

• Can't stop the "what ifs" no matter how hard you try

• Perform rituals or mental checks to feel "safe" and need to repeat them constantly

• Seek reassurance from others but never feel truly reassured

• Feel high-functioning on the outside but completely exhausted on the inside

• Know your fears don't make logical sense, but can't stop them anyway

OCD is highly treatable but only with the right approach. General therapy often makes it worse. We specialize in Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), the gold-standard treatment for OCD, alongside ACT and CBT to help you break the cycle for good and get your life back.

You don't have to keep white-knuckling your way through it. There is a way out.

Anxiety & Panic Disorders

Anxiety that won't shut off. A heart that races out of nowhere. A body that feels like something terrible is always about to happen, even when you're perfectly safe.

Panic disorder and generalized anxiety can make you feel like you're constantly bracing for impact. You might avoid places, situations, or experiences that trigger it. You might feel exhausted from always being "on." You might look totally fine to everyone around you while quietly falling apart inside.

Common experiences we hear from clients:

• Panic attacks that feel sudden and completely terrifying

• Avoiding driving, crowds, stores, or situations that feel unsafe

• Physical symptoms, chest tightness, dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath, with no clear medical cause

• Constant reassurance-seeking that never actually reassures

• Feeling like you're "losing it" or "going crazy"

Trying to out-think your anxiety or force positive thoughts rarely works. Our research-backed approach helps you understand the anxiety cycle and retrain your brain to respond differently, so panic doesn't run your life anymore.

Fear & Phobia Therapy

Phobias are more than just being squeamish or nervous. When a specific fear, heights, flying, needles, driving, vomiting, dogs, or something else entirely, starts affecting your daily life, it's no longer just a quirk. It becomes a limitation.

Phobias can make routine activities feel impossible. They can cost you opportunities, experiences, and freedom. Most people try to cope by avoiding the fear entirely, but avoidance actually strengthens phobias over time. The more you avoid, the bigger it grows.

Signs your phobia has crossed a line:

• You plan your entire life around avoiding the thing you fear

• The thought of encountering it triggers immediate panic or dread

• It's affecting work, travel, relationships, or daily routines

• You feel frustrated, embarrassed, or isolated because of it

The good news: phobias are among the most treatable conditions we work with. Using ERP gradual, supported exposure to the thing you fear, your brain can actually learn that it's not dangerous. You don't have to live around it forever.

Social Anxiety Therapy

Social anxiety isn't shyness. It's the crushing fear of being judged, humiliated, or seen as "too much", or not enough. It makes you replay every conversation afterward, scanning for what you said wrong. It makes you shrink yourself in rooms where you should feel free to show up fully.

Social anxiety often hides behind high achievement and a polished exterior. You show up. You perform. But internally, you're exhausted from managing how you come across every single moment.

You might relate to:

• Dreading social events days or weeks before they happen

• Replaying interactions after the fact, convinced you said something wrong

• Avoiding speaking up at work, in class, or in groups, even when you have something to say

• Feeling like everyone is watching and judging you

• Canceling plans to avoid the anxiety and then feeling worse for it

Social anxiety responds powerfully to ERP, CBT, and ACT. We help you stop avoiding the moments that matter and start actually living in them, not just surviving them.

Rumination & Obsessive Thinking

Rumination feels like problem-solving. It feels productive like if you just think about it a little more, a little harder, you'll finally find the answer that makes the anxiety go away. But you never do. Because rumination isn't actually thinking. It's your brain stuck in a loop.

If your mind replays past conversations, catastrophizes about the future, or obsessively analyzes your own thoughts and feelings, you know how draining it is. It can feel impossible to be present. To enjoy anything. To just stop.

Rumination often shows up as:

• Replaying past events over and over, searching for what you did wrong

• Constant "what if" thinking that spirals and never resolves

• Mental reviewing, analyzing, or reassurance-seeking in your own head

• Feeling mentally exhausted even after resting or sleeping

• Struggling to be present because your mind is always somewhere else

Rumination is a core feature of OCD, anxiety, and depression and it's one of the things we're most skilled at treating. ACT and ERP are especially effective at helping you disengage from the thought loop without fighting it, so you can actually get your mental energy back.

Chronic Worry & Generalized Anxiety

Some people don't have one big fear. They have all of them. Health, finances, relationships, work, the future, the worry moves from one thing to the next, always finding something new to latch onto. This is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and it's exhausting in a way that's hard to explain to people who don't experience it.

When pressure becomes your baseline, your nervous system stays stuck in survival mode. Burnout, insomnia, physical tension, and emotional depletion follow. You might feel like you're managing, because you've been managing your whole life, but "managing" is not the same as actually feeling okay.

Chronic worriers often tell us:

• "I know I'm overthinking it, but I can't stop"

• "I feel like I'm always waiting for something to go wrong"

• "I can't relax even when things are fine"

• "My mind races at night and I can't fall asleep"

• "I'm tired of living in my head"

CBT, ACT, and DBT-informed strategies help you understand the connection between your thoughts, feelings, and nervous system and give you real tools to interrupt the cycle. Not just temporarily. For good.

Eating Disorder Treatment

Eating disorders are not about food. They are about control, fear, pain, and a desperate need to feel okay in a body and a world that can feel completely overwhelming. They are also serious, among the most dangerous mental health conditions there are and they require specialized treatment from clinicians who truly understand them.

At Clear Light Therapy, we treat eating disorders with the same evidence-based rigor and genuine compassion we bring to everything we do. We understand that the eating disorder has probably been your coping mechanism for a long time and that healing means building something to replace it, not just taking it away.

Recovery is possible. Lasting recovery. And it starts with the right help. Break free from the eating disorder cycle and reclaim your life. With compassionate, evidence-based care, healing is possible.

Anorexia Nervosa Treatment

Anorexia is not about vanity or a desire to be thin. It's a serious, life-threatening mental health condition rooted in fear, control, and a distorted relationship with your body. It can make you feel like restriction is the only thing keeping you safe, even as it quietly takes everything from you.

You or someone you love may be struggling with anorexia if you notice:

• Severe restriction of food intake or obsessive calorie counting

• An intense, overwhelming fear of weight gain

• A distorted body image, seeing yourself as larger than you are

• Rituals around food, eating, and exercise that feel impossible to break

• Social withdrawal and hiding eating habits from others

• Physical symptoms including fatigue, hair loss, and feeling cold all the time

Anorexia has one of the highest mortality rates of any mental health condition which is why early, specialized treatment matters so much. Our approach combines CBT, DBT, and nutritional support to help you build a relationship with your body that isn't built on fear.

Bulimia Nervosa Therapy

Bulimia is exhausting in a way that's hard to describe. The cycle of restriction, bingeing, and purging can feel completely out of control and the shame that comes with it can make it feel impossible to ask for help. You might look totally "normal" on the outside. You might be the last person anyone would suspect. And you've probably been carrying this alone for a long time.

Signs of bulimia include:

• Repeated cycles of bingeing, eating large amounts in a short time, followed by purging through vomiting, laxatives, or excessive exercise

• Feeling completely out of control during binge episodes

• Intense preoccupation with food, weight, and body shape

• Hiding eating behaviors and feeling deep shame or embarrassment

• Using food and restriction to manage difficult emotions

You don't have to keep doing this alone. CBT is the gold-standard treatment for bulimia, and it works. We help you understand the cycle, interrupt it, and build real tools for managing the emotions underneath it.

Binge Eating Disorder Treatment

Binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder and one of the most misunderstood. It's not a lack of willpower. It's not just "overeating." It's a painful, compulsive relationship with food that feels impossible to control, and that's almost always tied to emotions that have nowhere else to go.

You may be struggling with binge eating disorder if you:

• Eat large amounts of food in a short time, feeling unable to stop

• Eat past the point of fullness or comfort, often in secret

• Feel intense shame, guilt, or disgust after eating but repeat the pattern anyway

• Use food to numb out, comfort yourself, or escape difficult feelings

• Have tried diets, restriction, and "starting over" many times and feel like you're failing

CBT, DBT, and ACT are all effective for binge eating disorder. We help you break the shame cycle, understand what's driving the behavior, and build a relationship with food, and yourself, that doesn't depend on restriction or punishment.

ARFID — Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder

ARFID is not picky eating. It's a genuine, distressing condition in which certain foods, based on their texture, smell, taste, color, or appearance, trigger intense fear, disgust, or anxiety. It can also involve a fear of choking, vomiting, or an adverse reaction to food. ARFID has nothing to do with body image or weight, it's about the experience of eating itself feeling unsafe.

ARFID often begins in childhood but can persist into adulthood, significantly limiting what a person can eat and affecting their quality of life, relationships, and ability to participate in social situations involving food.

Signs of ARFID include:

• A very limited range of "safe" foods with extreme difficulty expanding it

• Intense anxiety, gagging, or panic when presented with non-preferred foods

• Fear of choking, vomiting, or having an allergic reaction when eating

• Avoiding meals with others, restaurants, or any situation where food is unpredictable

• Nutritional deficiencies or significant impact on daily functioning

ARFID responds well to a structured, gradual exposure-based approach combined with CBT. We work at your pace, compassionately, patiently, to help expand your relationship with food without overwhelm or shame.

How We Work

Your healing should not rely on guesswork. At Clear Light Therapy, we use evidence-based therapies that are proven to work and we deliver them with real warmth and without judgment.

• Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) — the gold-standard for OCD, phobias, and anxiety

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — to identify and shift the thought patterns keeping you stuck

• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — to stop fighting your anxiety and start living your values

• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) — for emotional regulation and distress tolerance

You'll never feel like a checkbox here. Every treatment plan is personalized to you, your life, and what actually matters to you.

Where We Are & Who We Serve

Clear Light Therapy is located in Englewood, NJ and serves clients throughout Bergen County and Hudson County, including Ridgewood, Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Tenafly, Fort Lee, Fair Lawn, Bergenfield, Mahwah, Wyckoff, and beyond.

We offer both in-person and virtual therapy sessions across New Jersey, so you can get the support you need in whatever format works for your life. We work with adolescents and adults, including teens who are struggling and high-achieving adults who are tired of looking fine on the outside.

You deserve relief. You deserve healing. You deserve your life back.