Dr. Kiki Fehling

Dr. Kiki Fehling is a licensed psychologist, author, speaker, and Linehan Board–certified expert in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). She has helped hundreds of patients apply DBT skills to reduce emotional suffering and build meaningful lives. Beyond her clinical work, she has personally drawn on DBT to navigate life’s challenges, including her recovery after a heart attack.Dr. Fehling is passionate about sharing DBT skills and mental health education widely. She is the author of Self-Directed DBT Skills and the creator of DBT Cards for Coping Skills. She also uses social media, public speaking, and writing to make evidence-based mental health tools more accessible.Her expertise spans DBT skills—mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and dialectics—as well as 2SLGBTQ+ mental health, trauma, borderline personality disorder, suicide prevention, and the role of social media in mental health education.Dr. Fehling earned her B.A. in psychology from Yale University and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Rutgers University, where her research focused on emotion dysregulation, nonsuicidal self-injury, suicide, and minority stress among LGBTQ+ adults. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at national conferences. She later trained extensively in DBT under leaders in the field, including Dr. Shireen Rizvi and Dr. Melanie Harned, and became a certified DBT therapist in 2021.Clinically, Dr. Fehling has worked with patients in outpatient and inpatient settings and has supported other clinicians through DBT consultation and supervision. Most recently, she served as a staff psychologist at NYCBT in Manhattan, where she founded and coordinated the LGBTQ-affirmative DBT program. Though licensed in New York, she is not currently seeing patients.