Jaimee Arnoff, PhD
Anxiety & Chronic Pain Expert
Jaimee Arnoff, PhD, is a New York–licensed clinical psychologist, psychological assessment specialist, consultant, and professional educator whose work focuses on anxiety, depression, chronic pain, emotional regulation, and developmentally responsive care for children, adolescents, and young adults. She currently provides testing and assessment through IMPACT Psychological Services in Fishkill, New York, and maintains clinical, consulting, and training work through BFF Therapy in Beacon. Her practice integrates evidence-based treatment with a whole-person understanding of clients’ developmental histories, relationships, identities, physical health, and environments.
Dr. Arnoff is particularly recognized for translating structured therapeutic approaches into practical, collaborative interventions. Her clinical methods include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Exposure and Response Prevention, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Pain Reprocessing Therapy. Across therapy, assessment, and professional education, she emphasizes psychological safety, clear psychoeducation, client strengths, realistic treatment goals, and the careful adaptation of interventions to age, communication style, culture, and presenting concerns.
A graduate of Boston University and Gallaudet University, Dr. Arnoff is fluent in American Sign Language and provides culturally responsive services to Deaf and hard-of-hearing clients. Her background gives her a distinctive perspective on accessibility, direct communication, assessment validity, and the importance of understanding Deaf experience through linguistic and cultural frameworks rather than treating hearing status as a clinical deficit.
Professional Background
Dr. Arnoff earned bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Deaf Studies from Boston University before completing her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Gallaudet University. Her graduate education strengthened her American Sign Language proficiency and her commitment to providing mental health services that respect the language preferences, cultural identities, and lived experiences of Deaf and hard-of-hearing clients. She is currently licensed as a psychologist in New York.
Her professional background includes work across hospitals, residential treatment centers, community mental health clinics, private practice, and psychological assessment settings. These roles have involved children, adolescents, emerging adults, and families facing anxiety, depression, trauma-related concerns, self-injury, suicidal ideation, chronic pain, complex family dynamics, and developmental transitions. This range supports a clinical style that combines structured intervention with careful attention to safety, context, and the therapeutic relationship.
At IMPACT Psychological Services, Dr. Arnoff’s current work centers on comprehensive psychological testing and assessment for children, adolescents, and young adults. She also conducts court-ordered psychological and parenting evaluations in family-court contexts, where the quality of the assessment depends on gathering information from multiple sources, considering family dynamics, and communicating conclusions within the limits of the available evidence. Her approach is designed to help individuals and families leave the evaluation process with greater clarity about strengths, concerns, diagnoses, accommodations, and appropriate next steps.
Through BFF Therapy, Dr. Arnoff provides evidence-based psychotherapy and professional consultation, with particular attention to teens and young adults experiencing mood and anxiety disorders. Her official clinical profile also documents work with Deaf and hard-of-hearing clients from childhood through adulthood. The combination of therapy and assessment experience allows her to connect diagnostic understanding with practical treatment planning rather than treating evaluation and intervention as unrelated services.
Dr. Arnoff is certified in Pain Reprocessing Therapy and regularly provides education on the biopsychosocial treatment of chronic pain. She has developed and delivered professional trainings for clinicians and has consulted with schools, community organizations, and digital-health initiatives. Her educational work addresses anxiety treatment, emotional and behavioral regulation, chronic pain, suicide-related concerns, culturally responsive care, and the adaptation of evidence-based skills for younger clients and families.
Areas of Expertise
Anxiety Disorders and Evidence-Based Treatment. Anxiety treatment is a central part of Dr. Arnoff’s clinical and educational work. She helps clinicians examine how anxious predictions, threat sensitivity, physical arousal, avoidance, reassurance seeking, and safety behaviors can reinforce one another. Her approach uses collaborative case formulation to determine when CBT, DBT skills, ERP, psychoeducation, caregiver involvement, or another strategy best matches the client’s presentation. Clinical Events’ article Inside the Anxious Mind provides related background on fear systems, regulation, and neuroscience-informed anxiety care.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, DBT, and Exposure-Based Interventions. Dr. Arnoff draws from CBT to help clients identify relationships among thoughts, emotions, behavior, and physical responses. DBT-informed skills can support distress tolerance, emotion regulation, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness, while ERP helps appropriately assessed clients reduce avoidance and learn through direct experience that feared outcomes may be less likely, less dangerous, or more manageable than expected. Clinical Events’ guide to anxiety disorders and exposure therapy offers complementary information on the clinical use of exposure and response prevention.
Chronic Pain and Pain Reprocessing Therapy. Dr. Arnoff’s chronic-pain work uses a biopsychosocial framework that recognizes pain as real while examining how fear, attention, stress, avoidance, learned neural pathways, and beliefs about bodily danger may affect some persistent pain experiences. Pain Reprocessing Therapy is not appropriate for every pain condition and should not replace medical evaluation. For carefully assessed clients, however, it may help reduce fear of pain, increase confidence in movement, and reinterpret certain sensations through a greater sense of safety. The NIH’s overview of research on retraining the brain to treat chronic pain summarizes evidence from a randomized trial involving primary chronic back pain.
Psychological Testing and Forensic Assessment. Dr. Arnoff conducts psychological assessments designed to clarify cognitive, emotional, behavioral, developmental, and diagnostic questions. Her current work also includes court-ordered psychological and parenting evaluations. Effective assessment requires more than administering tests: it involves choosing appropriate measures, reviewing background information, integrating collateral data, recognizing cultural and linguistic limitations, and explaining conclusions in language that clients, caregivers, schools, courts, and other professionals can use responsibly.
Children, Adolescents, and Emerging Adults. Her clinical background includes substantial work with younger populations across intensive and outpatient settings. Treatment with children and adolescents often requires adapting language, pacing, examples, and skills to developmental level while determining how caregivers can support treatment without undermining privacy or trust. Clinical Events’ guide to confidentiality with minors and families addresses related questions involving consent, parental authority, safety, and therapeutic transparency.
Suicidal Ideation, Self-Injury, and High-Risk Presentations. Dr. Arnoff’s background includes work with clients experiencing suicidal thoughts and self-injurious behavior. Her approach emphasizes direct assessment, collaborative safety planning, emotional and behavioral regulation, attention to protective factors, and an appropriate level of care. She also develops training intended to help clinicians and community partners respond to youth mental-health concerns with less stigma and greater clarity.
Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Mental Health Care. Dr. Arnoff’s fluency in ASL and training at Gallaudet University inform her work with Deaf and hard-of-hearing clients. Direct communication can reduce the risk that meaning is lost through interpretation and can support more accurate assessment. Her approach also considers Deaf culture, identity, audism, communication preferences, educational history, and other intersecting factors that may shape the client’s experience and relationship with mental-health services.
Professional Training and Consultation. Dr. Arnoff teaches clinicians how to move from general knowledge of a treatment model to thoughtful application. Her programs combine clinical explanation, case examples, practical language, and adaptable interventions. The emphasis is not on presenting one modality as universally effective, but on helping professionals select evidence-informed strategies, recognize treatment barriers, collaborate with clients and caregivers, and remain responsive to safety, culture, development, and medical context.