psychotherapy+ Ketamine STUDIO
Neurodivergent Support (ADHD, AUTISM, OCD)
Ray specializes in supporting neurodivergent teens and young adults with ADHD, autism, OCD, and other traits. His approach is strengths-based, not about making your kid "normal," but helping them build systems that work with their brain. He also coaches families on understanding neurodivergence, reducing conflict, and advocating for accommodations at school or work.
Too many neurodivergent kids get pathologized instead of supported. Ray gets it, and he helps families embrace neurodivergent identities while building practical skills.
Residential Program Transitions
Ray works with families post-wilderness or residential treatment to maintain progress and prevent relapse. The first 90 days home are critical, when old patterns pull families back without ongoing support. Ray coordinates with your teen's therapists, helps rebuild trust, and works with the whole family system to shift dynamics. He understands that treatment doesn't end when your kid comes home, that is where it begins. Most families see regression within 30-60 days post-treatment without support. Ray prevents that by addressing the system, not just the teen.
Executive Functioning & Skills Coaching
Ray teaches executive functioning skills often underdeveloped in neurodivergent individuals, including time management, organization, task initiation, planning, emotional regulation. This isn't life coaching, it's therapeutic skill-building integrated with deeper work on identity, shame, and family dynamics. He helps teens and young adults build systems that work for their brain, not against it. Executive functioning challenges aren't laziness, they're neurological. Ray provides practical tools while addressing underlying shame and family conflict around "underperforming."
Family Systems & Relational Repair
Ray works with entire family systems, not just the identified patient. He helps families shift unhealthy patterns, improve communication, and rebuild trust after years of conflict. Whether it's coparenting challenges, sibling dynamics, or parents at their breaking point, Ray helps create structure and repair that sticks. Family sessions focus on sustainable change, not temporary fixes.
Individual therapy doesn't work when the family system pulls everyone back. Ray addresses the patterns keeping the whole family stuck.
Behavioral Challenges & Oppositional Teens
Ray specializes in teens with oppositional behavior, substance use, school refusal, or explosive anger. He combines firm boundaries with deep empathy, understanding what's driving the behavior while holding teens accountable. He also works with parents to balance consequences with connection, stop enabling patterns, and create structure that reduces conflict.
Oppositional behavior is often driven by anxiety, trauma, or neurodivergence. Ray addresses root causes while teaching healthier coping.
Concierge Family Coordination & Parent Coaching
For complex cases, Ray provides concierge family support, coordinating with schools, psychiatrists, therapists, and other providers when families need a quarterback. He attends IEP meetings, communicates with treatment teams, and ensures everyone is aligned. Also offers parent coaching for high-stress situations where traditional therapy isn't enough. Systems thinker who sees what's falling through cracks.
Families navigating complex needs often feel overwhelmed coordinating care. Ray brings order to chaos and ensures nothing gets missed.
Specialties
Psychotherapist & Family Consultant
Ray Demers
LCSW
Structured, systems-based work for complex family dynamics and neurodivergent clients
Ray Demers specializes in families navigating the complexity of neurodivergence, behavioral challenges, and transitions that require more than weekly therapy can provide. He works with teens and young adults with ADHD, autism, OCD, and other neurodivergent traits, as well as the families struggling to support them.
His approach blends family systems therapy, DBT skills training, executive functioning coaching, and case management to help clients move from chaos to competence. Ray doesn't just work with the identified patient, he works with the entire system to create sustainable change.
Much of Ray's work involves family reintegration after wilderness or residential programs. He understands that sending your kid away was the hardest decision you've made, and coming home is where the real work begins. He helps families maintain gains, prevent relapse, and rebuild trust in the critical 90 days post-treatment.
Ray also provides concierge family support for complex cases, including coordinating with schools, psychiatrists, and other providers when families need someone to quarterback the chaos. He's the systems thinker who sees what's not working and helps create structure that actually fits your family.
Direct, grounded, and compassionate, Ray meets families where they are, whether that's crisis, exhaustion, or simply not knowing what to do next. He helps neurodivergent individuals succeed in relationships, social environments, and their professional worlds without masking who they are.
Your kid isn't broken, the system they're trying to fit into is. My job is to help them build a life that works for their brain, not against it.
Ray Demers, LCSW
Professional Experience
Ray brings clinical expertise and practical systems thinking to families navigating neurodivergence, behavioral challenges, and complex transitions.
Joining Higher Ground's in January 2026, he specializes in family systems work, neurodivergent support, and post-treatment integration for teens and young adults whose needs exceed traditional weekly therapy.
His background includes extensive work with families post-residential treatment, neurodivergent teens struggling with executive functioning, and high-stress family systems requiring both therapeutic intervention and care coordination. Ray has worked with hundreds of families dealing with ADHD, autism, OCD, oppositional behavior, and "failure to launch" dynamics.
Before clinical work, Ray spent years in education and youth programming with neurodivergent students and behaviorally complex teens. That hands-on experience taught him what actually works when kids are melting down or shutting down, and what doesn't.
Ray's expertise includes family systems therapy, DBT skills training, executive functioning coaching, wilderness therapy transitions, and concierge family coordination for complex cases requiring multi-provider collaboration. Ray is licensed in CT, MA, NH and ME. He's equally comfortable in IEP meetings, family therapy sessions, and crisis interventions.
Master of Social Work (MSW)
Clinical degree emphasizing systems thinking, case management, and coordinated care to address individuals within their family, school, and community contexts. Licensed in CT, MA, NH, and VT.
Specialized Training in Family Systems Therapy
Therapeutic approach that views problems as patterns within the family system, not just individual pathology. Focuses on shifting relationship dynamics and communication to create sustainable change.
DBT-Informed Practice
Dialectical Behavior Therapy teaches practical skills for emotional regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness, especially effective for teens with behavioral dysregulation.
Wilderness therapy transition specialist
Specialized training in post-treatment integration, relapse prevention, and family reunification after wilderness or residential programs during the critical first 90 days home.
Trauma-Informed Care Training
An approach that recognizes how trauma shapes behavior and nervous system responses. Emphasizes safety, trust, and reducing re-traumatization in therapeutic relationships. Expert in group facilitation and creative distress tolerance interventions.
Neurodivergent Support Specialist
Expertise in strengths-based support for ADHD, autism, OCD, and other neurodivergent traits, helping individuals build systems that work with their brain, not against it.