Direct, practical online therapy for executives, CEOs, founders and senior leaders, and for physicians, attorneys and other professionals who carry a similar weight. The focus is the psychological cost of sustained responsibility, and what to change about it.
People who report to you depend on your confidence. Peers may be competing with you. Boards, investors or clients are evaluating you. The people at home may not know the full context, and friends can hear your problems as good problems to have. In a public role, even an ordinary struggle raises questions about reputation.
Therapy is one of the few conversations in your week where you are not leading, reassuring or managing anyone's reaction. That changes what gets said.
My work as a psychologist for executives has included CEOs, CFOs and other senior leaders in Fortune 500 and other large national and global organizations. It has also included senior professionals in major consulting and professional services firms, physicians in demanding clinical and leadership roles, attorneys at large law firms, entrepreneurs managing multiple businesses, and people whose careers involve substantial public visibility.
The industries vary. The pressures are remarkably consistent: sustained responsibility, consequential decisions and few places to speak candidly. You shouldn't have to spend your first sessions explaining why your job is different.
Accountability for an organization, its people and its numbers, and a constant claim on your attention.
A company that can stand for money, identity, reputation, employees and family security at once. Sometimes several companies.
High-consequence decisions, clinical and leadership responsibility, and a mind trained never to stop problem solving.
Adversarial work, billable pressure and partnership expectations, and an analytical habit that doesn't switch off at home.
Client demands, travel, promotion pressure and constant evaluation, with an expectation of being available at all hours.
Media, government, politics and other visible fields, where a private difficulty can carry reputational weight.
Many of the people I work with have no executive title at all. They carry comparable responsibility or internal pressure, and that is what matters here.
Usually it doesn't look like dysfunction. Most people who come to me for this are still successful and respected by every outside measure. What has changed is what it takes to stay that way. Not everyone recognizes all of these.
Consequential calls all day, and then even small decisions at home feel like one too many.
The workday ends. The internal meeting does not.
Preparing, checking and anticipating problems have become hard to tell apart from competence.
Plenty of people around you, and very few you can be completely unfiltered with.
Your family gets whatever is left after everyone else has had your attention.
It has gone well enough that separating what you do from who you are has become difficult.
When the pressure shows up mostly as worry and a mind that won't settle, see treatment for high-functioning anxiety. When it is landing hardest on your marriage, couples therapy for high-performing professionals and their partners is often the more direct route.
Some people come because something is clearly wrong. Others come because things are going well and they want the next stretch to cost less than the last one. Both are good reasons to start.
What people often come in to work on
If the main problem is exhaustion, cynicism or a tank that no longer refills, start with executive burnout therapy. If you are weighing a promotion, an exit, a sale or retirement, therapy for career transitions and major decisions is built for exactly that.
You probably have no shortage of advice: consultants, mentors, advisors, a board, perhaps a coach, and a spouse with opinions of their own. Therapy does a different job. As a licensed clinical psychologist (Psy.D.), I look at what sits underneath the performance and how it shows up in your leadership and your home life.
Good coaching builds skills toward professional goals. This is clinical psychology applied to the realities of a high-responsibility life.
What therapy can address
Work, sleep, relationships, habits, mood and decision making. Capable people often arrive with one explanation for the problem and find something else is keeping it going.
The assumptions, expectations and coping strategies that maintain the problem, including several that helped build your career.
Insight turned into concrete changes in judgment, energy, boundaries, relationships and the way you carry pressure.
Direct by design. I tell you what I see, and we spend the time on what will change it.
For some clients privacy is a preference. For others it is essential, and being careful about who knows is entirely reasonable.
Discretion is part of doing this work properly, not a premium feature.
I'm authorized under PSYPACT, the interstate compact for telepsychology, so I can work with clients across participating states by secure video. That suits people who travel, split time between cities or relocate, and anyone who would rather have a psychologist who knows their world than whoever is nearby. What counts is where you are physically located during each session, which must be a participating state or Washington, DC.
Psychotherapy informed by the realities of leadership and high responsibility, and by what those pressures do to mood, relationships and home life. There is no special diagnosis or method behind the name. It is clinical psychology from someone who understands how these roles work.
The clinical principles are the same for everyone. What differs is the context: responsibility, visibility, decision load and organizational politics, and how they interact with your psychology and home life. You spend less time explaining your world and more time working on it.
Yes. My clinical work has included CEOs, CFOs and other senior leaders, including leaders in Fortune 500 and other large organizations. To protect confidentiality, individual clients and their companies are never identified.
Yes. My practice includes physicians in demanding clinical and leadership roles and attorneys in large firm environments. Both professions reward vigilance and an inability to switch off, which helps at work and often costs people everywhere else.
I have experience working with professionals whose careers involve significant public visibility, including people in media, government and politics. Clients and their affiliations are never identified for marketing purposes.
Coaching generally focuses on professional goals, leadership skills and career development. Psychotherapy fits when the issue involves anxiety, mood, burnout, relationships, trauma, compulsive habits, identity or long-standing patterns. The two overlap, and the free consultation is a good place to work out which you need.
No. Many people start well before any crisis, to make a decision well, become less reactive, or stop carrying load they don't need to. Starting early is usually easier than starting late.
Yes, within the legal and ethical limits that apply to every client. Standard exceptions include imminent risk of serious harm, suspected abuse of a child or vulnerable adult, and certain court orders. Sessions are by secure video, and care is not arranged through employers.
Yes, if you are physically located in a PSYPACT participating state or Washington, DC during each session. What counts is where you are at the time, not where you live or where your company is based.
It depends on your goals, their complexity and the history behind them. Focused and practical doesn't mean a fixed number of sessions. Some people come for one defined decision or problem; others stay longer because the work keeps paying off.
I offer a free 15 minute consultation to talk through what's happening, whether my approach is a good fit, and any questions you have about working together. No cost, and no pressure.
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