I provide direct, practical therapy for high-achieving professionals whose careers run on competence, judgment and consistency: physicians, attorneys, consultants, finance and technical professionals, and others who are depended on to get it right. You can be excellent at your work and still be quietly struggling with what it costs you.
As a psychologist for high-achieving professionals, my clinical work has included physicians, attorneys in large-firm environments, senior professionals in major consulting and professional services organizations, finance, sales and technical professionals, and professionals in highly visible public roles. Each field produces its own version of pressure, and it helps not to have to explain yours.
Years of training, patients who depend on your judgment, and an identity built on being the one who knows what to do. Hard days follow you home, usually without being discussed.
Client responsibility, competition for partnership and a career measured in hours. Training that rewards finding the weak point in every argument, eventually including your own.
Up-or-out promotion cycles, clients who expect an answer by morning, and a polished presentation that leaves few places to admit how it is actually going.
Performance measured in numbers every day, where compensation and identity become hard to separate and a bad quarter feels personal.
Work that rewards precision and systems thinking, and a habit of treating every problem, including the emotional ones, as something to debug.
People in media, government, politics and other public roles, where a personal struggle can feel professionally consequential and the public version of you is always on.
If your pressure comes mainly from running an organization or leading a large team, therapy for executives and senior leaders is the closer fit.
None of these is a diagnosis, and plenty of successful people recognize only one or two.
High standards helped build the career. Now nothing feels finished, mistakes feel outsized, and rest feels unearned.
Expertise means anticipating risk and seeing flaws early. The same skill is hard to turn off at dinner.
You reached the things you wanted and found they did not feel the way you expected.
When competence is central to who you are, uncertainty, dependence or simply not being good at something can feel unusually threatening.
Even with nothing left to do, your body behaves as if something still needs your attention.
A drink, a scroll or one more hour of work has become the way the day ends.
If anxiety itself is the main problem, anxiety therapy for high performers goes deeper on it. If you are running on empty after years of overextension, start with burnout therapy.
A strategy can be exactly right in one setting and expensive in another. Relentless standards serve you well in an operating room, a courtroom or a client meeting, and cost more than they return when applied to a marriage, to sleep or to every ordinary decision.
You may not need less ambition. You may need more flexibility.
None of this argues against excellence, mastery or financial success. The aim is to keep the ambition while becoming less reactive, more present, better able to rest and more deliberate about what deserves your effort.
Psychotherapy is not another layer of professional advice. It is a place to look at what never shows up in a performance review: anxiety, mood, habits, relationships, family patterns and the standards you hold yourself to. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist (Psy.D.), and this is clinical psychology for people who happen to function at a very high level.
What we can work on
What is actually happening across work, relationships, mood, sleep, habits and the expectations you carry, rather than the explanation you arrived with.
The beliefs, avoidance, coping strategies and relationship dynamics that hold the problem in place.
Concrete shifts in boundaries, communication, routines, emotional regulation and how you make decisions.
Active, direct and collaborative. You will know what I think, and we will spend the time on what is worth changing.
The drive that makes you reliable at work can make home harder. Your partner gets the tired version of you. Family time happens while your mind is still at the office. Ambiguity at home is harder to tolerate than it should be, and it becomes easier to provide for people than to be emotionally available to them.
If the strain has moved into your marriage, couples therapy for high-achieving couples may help, alongside or instead of individual work.
Some professionals come because something is clearly wrong. Many come earlier, while things still work, because they have noticed a pattern worth dealing with now.
Common reasons to start
If you are facing a major career decision or identity shift, see therapy for career and life transitions. If you are doing well and mainly want to sharpen focus, habits, health or effectiveness, performance optimization is built for that.
Physicians, attorneys and people in public roles often have good reasons to be careful about who knows they are in therapy.
Discretion here is standard practice, whatever your profession.
Through PSYPACT, the interstate compact for psychologists, I can work with you by secure video in any of the 40 participating states and Washington, DC. That makes it easier to fit sessions around travel and long hours, and to choose a psychologist for fit rather than proximity.
Ordinary, evidence-based psychotherapy informed by the realities of demanding professional work: high standards, responsibility, visibility and competition. It does not treat ambition as a problem. The difference is familiarity with how these careers shape everything else.
Yes. I have worked with high-performing physicians, including those carrying clinical leadership responsibilities. Common themes include perfectionism, carrying difficult cases home, and an identity built around always knowing what to do.
Yes, including attorneys in large-firm environments. The work often involves analytical overdrive, partnership pressure, and evenings and weekends that the job has quietly claimed.
Yes. My clinical work has included senior professionals in major global consulting and professional services organizations. Firms and clients are never identified.
Yes. These careers share measurable performance, high expectations and a tendency for work to become the organizing principle of life. Those patterns come up often in this work.
Yes. Some of the people I work with are in media, government, politics or other visible fields, where discretion matters more than usual. I do not identify clients, employers or affiliations in any marketing.
No. Many professionals start while everything still works, because they notice a pattern, face a decision, or want their personal life to get more than what is left over.
Executive therapy focuses on leading: organizational responsibility, ownership and large teams. This is broader, for accomplished people whose pressure comes from expertise, standards, competition or visibility, whether or not they manage anyone.
Performance optimization is for people who are functioning well and mainly want better habits, focus or health. This is for concerns like anxiety, perfectionism, relationship strain, low mood or burnout, even when work is going fine.
Yes. You receive the same confidentiality as any client, with the same standard exceptions, such as a serious risk of harm. Care is private pay and delivered by secure video, so it does not run through your employer.
Yes. Through PSYPACT, I can work with you by secure video in any of the 40 participating states and Washington, DC.
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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