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September 30, 2024 / 2024 Connecticut's Healthcare Heroes Awards

2024 Healthcare Hero: Nancy Lichtenberg

Nancy Lichtenberg Family Counseling Clinician Jewish Family Services Return to the honorees homepage
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Winner Category | Mental Health

Nancy Lichtenberg has over 35 years of experience working in nonprofit social service agencies, and 22 of them have been as a psychotherapist with JFS as part of the clinical team.

Lichtenberg taught the state-mandated parenting program for divorcing parents for 20 years and singularly operated FOCUS on KIDS, a court-ordered program for high-conflict co-parents, for 10 years.

Prior to coming to JFS, Lichtenberg worked in various settings, including a substance use intensive outreach program, correctional facilities and alternative incarceration centers, and a methadone maintenance treatment program.

What have been your significant contributions to your organization?

In just the last two years, I’ve offered 1,181 client sessions and 260 hours of case management for my clients. I have been trained in emotionally focused therapy for couples and internal family systems, in addition to other models of treatment to address anxiety, depression, prolonged grief and distressing family dynamics.

As a clinician with a close relationship with JFS’s Money Coach and other local charitable organizations, I have been able to help many clients with the state of their monetary affairs. Because there are so many dimensions to mental health, including financial health and one’s ability to save and plan, I go above and beyond to help clients to connect with resources that are vital to their financial decision-making.

I have also been an integral part of JFS earning and maintaining “Getting It Right,” a certification that trains staff in sensitivity and awareness of LBGTQ issues and aging. I worked closely with the agency’s home health program, Care at Home by JFS, to ensure that home health providers have the training they need to properly serve the LGBTQ senior population.

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Tell us about a challenge in your job that you were able to overcome.

COVID-19 and the isolation surrounding it created additional risk factors for most clients, but for one senior client in particular, the pandemic exacerbated her suicidality and stress-related anxiety. I worked closely with this client, her rabbi, and the senior technology expert at JFS to ensure that she would be able to attend virtual worship services. I found this client a support group called Alternatives to Suicide, in which she was able to participate virtually.

I was able to locate a donated laptop so that she could continue getting telehealth services with us; and when her life became even more complicated after her mother’s death from COVID-19 in a nursing facility, I was able to meet twice-weekly with this client until she moved forward and could re-engage in life.

With these supports in place, the client had the emotional security to begin to heal.

What’s your next major goal and/or challenge?

My primary goal is to further enhance my expertise in working with seniors who have trauma histories. As I age, I find the clients on my clinical caseload are aging as well. This is in part because some of the clients that I see now, with diagnoses of chronic mental illness, have been with me throughout my tenure at JFS.

It is also, in part, because prospective clients often request to be matched with a clinician their age or older. As part of my goal to be more informed about trauma needs in older adults, I am working on a panel presentation called “Coming to America from the Former Soviet Union.”

Most speakers on the panel are part of JFS’s Holocaust Survivor Program, and all are survivors of anti-Semitism and regional genocide in World Word II-era Eastern Europe.

Personal side:

Residence: West Hartford

Favorite way to relax: The best way for me to relax is to watch the “Daily Show” or one of my favorite stand-up comedians on Netflix. I also love attending live stand-up comedy performances. Furthermore, I enjoy running around with my 4-year-old Maltese, Ivy Lou, who we “rescued” during the height of the pandemic from what I call “the Maltese Orphanage.” Ivy is an adult female who was re-homed because she was unable to breed.

Hobbies: Despite my technology challenges, as my younger colleagues can attest to, I bought a digital camera with interchangeable lenses for taking wildlife photographs. I started with backyard bird photography, and I now take the camera out into nature. I particularly enjoy photographing natural and urban landscapes.

Currently reading: “The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss,” by Mary-Frances O’Connor

Favorite cause: My favorite causes are those dealing with gender, human sexuality and LGBTQ+ issues, starting primarily in 2015 when my then 19-year-old child revealed their identity as gender non-binary. I am dedicated to building, maintaining and expanding safe spaces for transgender people, and I have participated on multiple panel discussions as a parent and ally.

Fun fact: I am involved in the Little Free Library “take a book, share a book” movement to support literacy and improve book access. As a gift to me, my husband built a wooden library on a front yard post, illuminated at night by a solar-powered interior light, and, for a personal touch, I painted the library red and named it “Ruben’s Red Reading Room,” after my dog Ruben died of natural causes in 2021.

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