For senior academics

The rigor you bring to your research. Applied to your own functioning.

You've spent twenty years building expertise in how things actually work. You deserve a clinical approach that meets that standard — not platitudes, not vague goals, not open-ended talking. $300/session. Cash-pay. Independent of your institution.


I get it.

You're constantly thinking, mentoring, producing, solving, and carrying responsibility for other people. The pressure is rarely dramatic — it's cumulative. Years of deadlines, evaluation, administrative demands, and intellectual intensity can quietly disconnect you from rest, creativity, and even your own life outside achievement. I understand how easy it is for high-functioning burnout to hide inside competence.


What's really going on.

Academic environments reward sustained self-sacrifice in ways that can become difficult to see from the inside. Because the pressure is intellectual rather than visibly chaotic, many academics miss how profoundly their nervous system has adapted to constant evaluation, comparison, and productivity. Over time, curiosity can slowly become performance, rest starts to feel undeserved, and self-worth becomes increasingly tied to output, recognition, and expertise.


How working with me is different

A structured, evidence-based clinical process.

I do written case conceptualization, treatment plans with measurable goals, and scheduled progress reviews. If the approach isn't working, we identify why and recalibrate. This is how clinical psychology is supposed to work — and usually doesn't.

Schedule

Teaching terms, grant deadlines, conference season, and the general irregularity of academic life. I work with your calendar, not against it.

Independent

No connection to your university's EAP, counseling center, HR systems, or employee benefits. Working outside insurance keeps your care more directly between you and your provider.

Rigorous

CBT, ACT, and other evidence-based interventions — described to you with the same precision you'd expect from a good methods section. No hand-waving about "the work."

Depth

I work with the full range of what brings senior academics in: relationship strain, post-tenure disorientation, questions about whether to stay in academia, family-of-origin patterns that became newly relevant. Not just the administrative exhaustion.


Who I typically work with

You might recognize yourself here.

Hover to read

A tenured associate professor at a major research university, fifteen years in, recently appointed to chair a search committee and serve on two college-wide task forces. The R01 just got renewed but the writing took six months out of her actual research time. She’s mentoring three doctoral students, two postdocs, and a junior faculty member who is struggling, and she’s the person all of them come to with the things they can’t say to anyone else. Her own work — the questions that brought her into the field — keeps getting pushed to weekends, then to summers, then to “after this semester.” She made full professor a year ago and felt nothing. She’s not depressed, exactly. She’s running on something other than what she started with, and she doesn’t have anyone to say that to who would understand without it becoming a referendum on her career.

The Investment

$300 per session

Sessions are offered through a private-pay practice. Superbills are available for clients seeking out-of-network reimbursement, which may offset a portion of the fee depending on your plan.

Working outside insurance allows for a more personalized, flexible, and thoughtful therapeutic process.

Book a free 15-min fit call →

Frequently asked questions

Questions academics ask me.

How does private-pay work?

Sessions are $300, paid directly after each appointment. This practice operates outside insurance, which means no claim is filed with a carrier on your behalf. After each session I provide a superbill — a formatted receipt — that you can submit to your personal plan for out-of-network reimbursement if you choose. Working outside insurance keeps decisions about your care more directly between you and your provider.

Can we meet around teaching, grant deadlines, and the academic calendar?

Yes. I schedule around teaching terms, grant cycles, conference season, and the general irregularity of academic life. If you have a submission deadline coming up and need to shift things around, we shift. Most academic clients prefer a consistent weekly slot outside teaching hours — early morning or evening — that we protect from semester drift. We'll sort out the logistics in the fit call.

I've used my institution's EAP or counseling center before. How is this different?

Several ways. EAPs typically cap sessions at 3–8, which is enough for acute stress and essentially nothing for sustained clinical work. EAP providers are contracted through your employer — records are held by a third-party vendor your institution selected, and the independence is more limited than it appears. And most EAP therapists are generalists. I understand the specific pressures of senior academic life — administrative accumulation, post-tenure disorientation, identity fusion with a field — without you spending sessions providing context before we can do real work.

I don't really have classic burnout symptoms. I'm functional. Is therapy still appropriate?

Burnout is a colloquial label for a range of things with different clinical shapes. What I hear more often from academics is something more specific: functional but running on something other than what brought them into the field. A flattening of the work that used to be meaningful. A sense of displacement from the questions they actually care about. The inability to find the right structure to say any of this to anyone. That pattern responds to clinical work, and you don't have to be impaired to benefit from it.

Do you work with academics whose primary issue is something other than burnout — relationship strain, post-tenure questions, family-of-origin patterns?

Yes, and this is worth saying directly: burnout is one reason academics come in, not the only one. I work with the full range of what senior academics bring — relationship strain that's been de-prioritized for years, questions about whether to stay in academia, late-career identity questions, family patterns that became more salient after major career transitions. The academic context matters because it shapes the patterns, but the presenting issue doesn't have to be work.

What if I'm considering leaving academia entirely?

That's a legitimate clinical question, not a crisis. A lot of what I work on with academics is the identity weight attached to that decision — the fear that leaving means something about the last twenty years, or about who you are. The goal isn't to push you toward staying or leaving. It's to help you make that decision from a clearer place, rather than from exhaustion or accumulated resentment, so you can trust it afterward.

Not ready to book?

Take the 3-minute mind-body check first.

A self-reflection tool built around the patterns I see most often. Scores in your browser. No email required.

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Ready to see if this is a fit?

15 minutes. You ask questions, I ask questions. No commitment. No sales pitch.

Book a free 15-min fit call →