About

I am a clinician with extensive training as a clinical psychologist and sport/performance psychologist. I specialize in individual therapy, and also provide group therapy, psychological assessment, and mental performance enhancement consultation. I have experience in private practice settings, college counseling centers, and military mental health treatment.

Also, I have experience working with athletes, teams, and coaches of all levels, from competitive youth, to collegiate athletes, to professional and olympic athletes. My personal sport/performance background is in soccer, basketball, baseball, and triathlon.

I work with nearly all types of psychological issues, including anxiety (generalized, social, ocd, panic attacks, and phobias), depression, interpersonal/relationship difficulties, trauma, grief, family concerns, chronic pain, life transitions, health/lifestyle changes, and specific stressors. Additionally, for those with sport/performance-related concerns, I provide services for performance anxiety, fear of failure, emotion regulation, motivation, burnout, slumps, improving focus and concentration, and coping with injury and rehabilitation.

My theoretical orientation is rooted in a philosophy called functional contextualism, which emphasizes that every behavior (including thinking and feeling as behaviors) may work for (and/or against) you and is likely caused or maintained by a number of factors rather than simply one cause or factor. I think of people as being a conglomeration of all their life experiences and all the influences of their relationship "Teachers" throughout life. People can get stuck in patterns of behaving and thinking about themselves and others and struggle against themselves and their experiences. I use acceptance and commitment therapy (act), cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal/relational therapy, psychodynamic or functional analytic psychotherapy, and exposure therapy. On a basic level, and in somewhat cliche terms, nothing changes if nothing changes, so my focus as a therapist is to figure out how things work for you and create a laboratory of sorts in which you can try new behaviors, including ways of thinking and relating to yourself and others, and give up on unnecessary struggles in order to discover what truly works better for your life goals.

My style is compassionate yet challenging, patient yet active, and goal-oriented yet flexible. I also look for opportunities to promote humor in life and experiences. My goal is to work with people on changing themselves in ways that allow them to embrace the fullness of life, maximize vitality, learn more about themselves, and increase effectiveness in their endeavors.