
Elise MacCurtain-Cogan, LMHC
Elise believes in creating a collaborative and empowering therapeutic relationship where clients can build upon their strengths to find solutions for implementing positive changes in their lives.
Elise is a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) with 17 years of experience working with adolescents, children, families, and adults in a variety of settings including mental health centers, hospitals, and schools.
Background & Qualifications
Elise began her career on the Emergency Services Team for Aspire Health Alliance (formally South Shore Mental Health). In this role she facilitated emergency psychiatric evaluations for the community.
From there, Elise joined Brighton Allston Mental Health as the Lead Clinician for their outpatient pilot program at St. Marys’ Women and Children Center in Dorchester, MA.
After several years providing services to children, families, and adults in the Boston area, Elise transitioned to the South Shore and has been providing services in both mental health centers and school settings for over a decade.
Elise utilizes a variety of therapeutic techniques in the treatment of mood disorders, anxiety disorder, trauma, and transitions. These techniques include Solution Focused Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Humanistic Person-Centered Therapy, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) (for which she received training from the Linehan Institute in DBT).
Elise earned her Master’s Degree in Clinical Mental Health with a Holistic Specialization from Lesley University and her Bachelors’ Degree in Social Rehabilitation with a minor in Psychology from Assumption University.
Elise enjoys hiking, yoga, and time with her family. ,
Testimonials
Dr. Rein is a very special couples therapist. He is highly skilled and patient-guided. He helped us to finally communicate effectively, which was very much like learning a new and better language. We highly recommend Dr. Rein. He offers couples insightful observations and suggestions in a very positive and productive environment.
I just wanted to say that I enjoy the blogs that you’ve been sending and let you know that we are so grateful for your help. The “marathon sessions” were the best! That may have been more than a year ago, maybe two, but our relationship is still benefiting from the things you taught us. Now, when one of us gets upset about something, it’s not a world-ending downward-spiraling catastrophe (and that’s a relief in itself!), but instead, we can get ourselves out of it and even laugh together! It’s been great and we say all the time that we’re so thankful for you.
We are so lucky to have found Dr. Rein at the beginning of our marriage to set us on a course for happiness and success. My wife and I got married, had our daughter, and bought a house all in the same year after only dating for a year. When my wife first suggested counseling, I was skeptical and saw it as a sign of weakness and failure on my part, but Dr. Rein’s methods have taught us how to effectively communicate and work through difficult issues that we would not have otherwise been able to handle productively. We have learned to value and appreciate each other’s differences and how to avoid escalating disagreements that would lead into full blown arguments. I truly feel that these sessions have been invaluable for our marriage and well-being.
When my husband and I started seeing Dr. Rein, we thought our relationship might not work because our personalities were too different. We had been seeing another marriage counselor for over 6 months and that just wasn’t working. Looking back, our first marriage counselor felt more like a referee. My husband and I would discuss our fights and she’d let us know which one of us was being reasonable and which one was being unreasonable; then we’d discuss our different upbringings to determine why each of us felt the way we felt. Those methods never moved us forward. Dr. Rein never felt like a referee; he felt like a coach. If my husband felt unappreciated, it was taken as a fact; it wasn’t debated. The goal was to understand how I could express my appreciation because what I was saying or doing wasn’t working. If I felt hurt by something my husband said, it was taken as a fact; it wasn’t debated or determined to be an unreasonable feeling. The goal was to help my husband understand why I felt hurt and to help him communicate his feelings in a way that wasn’t hurtful to me. After working with Dr. Rein our personalities haven’t changed but our communication has and that has made all the difference. My husband and I still have disagreements, but we know how to keep them from escalating to relationship-harming blowouts. We are much more capable of expressing our wants and needs while still expressing how much we truly care for each other. I feel like we have “us” back. We have found our friendship again; we have fun all the time and enjoy each other again. I am so incredibly grateful for Dr. Rein’s help in saving our relationship.
I often think about how you helped us through our troubled time and just want to thank you again. Our relationship has grown better and better by the years because of our meetings with you, learning to communicate, and of course staying out of trouble on my end. Last year I took our whole family on safari and I surprised her with renewing our vows in the Kalahari Desert at sunset. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me and you helped open my eyes to what I really had, because at the end of the day, she really wasn’t the cause. I sincerely want you to know that I doubt we would still be together without your help. Just so you know, anyone I talk to who has relationship issues, you’re the number I give them. Not sure if you see any of them, but for their sake, I hope so.