Danna Bodenheimer, LCSW, DSW, writes about clinical social work topics. Danna is the author of Real World Clinical Social Work: Find Your Voice and Find Your Way and On Clinical Social Work: Meditations and Truths From the Field (The New Social Worker Press).
Dr. Bodenheimer, Founder and Director of the Walnut Psychotherapy Center, has worked in the field of mental health for more than 15 years. Her expertise is most centered around working with the LGBTQ+ population and neurodivergent population. She takes different, cutting edge approaches to thinking about and treating individual and organizational trauma. She has also long studied the impacts of dual marginalization on the psyches of individuals in treatment and in the workplace.
Dr. Bodenheimer received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Smith College, her post-baccalaureate degree from Columbia University, and her Doctor of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at Temple University, Rutgers University, Bryn Mawr College, and Penn. She can easily discuss complex issues of life along the gender spectrum, neurodivergence, racial dynamics in the workplace and interpersonally, and the lifelong impact that trauma has on overall human functionality. She has also authored two books on how to practice in the field of psychotherapy and has mentored hundreds of developing clinicians as they have grown their own practices.
Dr. Bodenheimer is unusually adept at having difficult dialogues, identifying language to help communicate intricate psychological processes, helping people to say what feels hardest to say, and creating relational environments that allow for lasting connection and safety.
Dr. Bodenheimer has recently developed an expertise around neuro-affirming care derived from multiple avenues of study and clinical work. First, she has long criticized and studied the harmful impacts of ABA (applied behavioral analysis) treatment, while trying to cultivate relational alternatives to this pervasive practice. Dr. Bodenheimer's own caseload is largely made up of neurodivergent clients, immersing her in the world of how different brains work daily. In Dr. Bodenheimer’s own research, her focus has also been on the strong intersection between gender expansion, queerness, and neurodiversity. She offers several trainings on what concrete steps a therapist can use to create a more neuro-affirming space for clients. This often means subverting and deconstructing our dominant understanding of what does and does not actually work, and how to create both relief and the opportunity for unmasking in treatment.
She is working on a book that affirms that self-diagnosis process and will serve as a guide and journal for those exploring their own neurotypes, which will be out in March 2026.
