Robin Ristenbatt, MD, LCSW-C

Robin Ristenbatt is a Maryland-licensed clinician with 40 years of professional experience helping people navigate relationship challenges, family conflict, and grief across life stages. She holds an MD, a Doctor of Medicine, and an LCSW-C, a licensed clinical social worker with clinical certification, combining medical and psychosocial perspectives in her work to address complex emotional and relational issues.

Her practice includes support for relationship and family concerns, trauma and abuse, intimacy-related issues, and coping with life changes, along with focused attention on abandonment, caregiver stress, commitment and communication problems, control issues, divorce and separation, domestic violence, family of origin struggles, guilt and shame, hospice and end-of-life counseling, infidelity, midlife transitions, non-monogamous relationship dynamics, and post-traumatic stress. Robin draws on a range of therapeutic approaches to meet each person where they are, including client-centered therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness therapy, motivational interviewing, narrative therapy, psychodynamic methods, solution-focused techniques, and trauma-focused therapy.

She emphasizes respect, sensitivity, and compassion, and aims to establish an open, nonjudgmental environment in which thoughts and feelings can be explored. Treatment and dialogue are tailored to the individual so that pacing, topics, and interventions align with a client’s unique needs and goals. Robin encourages and supports people who take the steps toward change, offering guidance designed to empower them through the process of growth and healing.