I’m the “relationships guy.”

I’m a natural-born relater off the streets of Brooklyn—ready to connect with anyone, anytime, anywhere, about anything.

I’ve been studying relationships since I was five years old. Back then, I was riveted by how the people around me talked to and treated each other, watching and feeling he show. The difference between being around people who were close and connected versus those who were disconnected and at odds was glaring and the tension was palpable.

That early sensitivity became my compass. It led me to devote my life to helping people on a transitional journey out of unhealthy and non-nourishing relationships and into healthy nourishing ones.

I call myself a Self- and relationship-based therapist. Why? Because every relationship you have—with a partner, a parent, a friend, or even a stranger—begins with the one you have with your Self.

What I learned after nearly 40 years of clinical work is that the cause is the cure. Nearly all the problems that bring people into therapy are relationship sourced, that is; a direct, and sometimes indirect, result of the lack of nourishment and pain from unmet emotional needs from past and current relationships.

And that the converse also applies. When you’re able to make deeper connections and create healthy nourishing relationships for themselves, the stresses and issues that brought them into therapy tend to resolve themselves and no longer needing professional help.

I call myself a Self and relationship-based therapist because it’s an apt description of the work I do, “All of the work I do is about empowering the transformation of relationships by developing the relationship with your Self. “

It doesn’t matter what you’ve been through in your life and regardless of how nourishing your relationships have been, it is possible for to learn the art and make your dream of having an inner circle of primary nourishing relationships, other than the one with your Self of course, come true.
My Dharma: To change lives, change relationships, and change the world—one relationship at a time, one encounter at a time.


— Daniel A. Linder, MFT
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