Sports Performance Therapist, Temecula, CA
You're capable. Your results, your coaches, and your track record, all of it.
So why does something keep getting in the way? It might be anxiety that spikes before competition or exams. A slump you can’t seem to climb out of. Burnout that’s making you question whether you even want this anymore. Perfectionism that drives you forward and quietly destroys you at the same time. Whatever it is, working harder hasn’t fixed it. That’s usually the sign it’s not a skill problem.
For high performers who are hitting a wall they can't push through on their own.
Students dealing with test anxiety, academic pressure, or the gap between how hard they’re working and the results they’re getting. Athletes who perform well in practice but something shifts under pressure.
Professionals who’ve built successful careers and are now dealing with burnout, imposter syndrome, or a loss of motivation they can’t explain. Adults returning to education or pivoting careers who are running into mental blocks they didn’t expect.
Most of these clients aren’t looking for someone to tell them to try harder. They already know how to do that. They want someone to help them figure out what’s actually in the way.
Learning differences often show up in this work too. ADHD, processing difficulties, anxiety that gets misread as laziness or lack of effort. If you’ve received a diagnosis and aren’t sure what to do with it, or if you suspect something is affecting your performance but haven’t had it identified yet, that’s a conversation worth having.
What Therapy Looks Like
Performance work with me covers both mental health and practical strategy.
I don’t just work with feelings about performance. I work with the actual mechanics of what’s getting in the way. That might mean understanding the anxiety pattern that activates before a big game or exam and building the specific skills to interrupt it.
It might mean looking at the perfectionism driving someone to overwork and understanding where it came from and what it’s actually costing. It might mean helping a student with a learning difference develop strategies that work with how their brain actually functions, not against it.
My background as a teacher and school administrator for 15 years is directly relevant here. I’ve worked with students across a wide range of learning profiles: GATE programs, ESL, students with IEPs, and students in residential programs. I understand how academic systems work and where they fail people. I can help students and parents navigate those systems more effectively while also doing the therapeutic work underneath.
Sessions are practical. I listen, but I also push. I’ll ask questions that cut through the noise and help you see what’s actually happening. If you’ve been working with coaches or tutors and still not moving, the missing piece is often the mental and emotional layer that those approaches don’t touch.
The shift clients describe most often is getting out of their own way.
The anxiety before competition becomes something they can recognize and work with rather than something that runs them. The perfectionism stops being the only thing running the show and starts being something they can actually use without it using them back. The slump breaks, not through a single insight, but through understanding what caused it well enough to not repeat it.
For students, this often shows up as less dread and better focus, a clearer sense of how they actually learn rather than how they think they should. Athletes find they perform closer to their practice level when it counts. Professionals get back to work that feels purposeful rather than just relentless.
I've worked with performance challenges across academic, athletic, and professional contexts for years.
Before becoming a therapist, I spent 15 years in education: as a classroom teacher, as a school administrator, and later as a therapist in nonpublic school settings with day and residential programs. I worked directly with students whose performance was being affected by learning differences, emotional challenges, and mental health conditions that hadn’t been properly identified or supported.
That background means I come to this work with a practical understanding of how performance actually develops and breaks down. I’m not just applying therapy techniques to a performance context. I understand the context itself.
I also work with the families of high-performing students when that’s useful. Parents navigating IEPs, school placement decisions, or the emotional weight of watching a child struggle, that’s work I’m equipped to do alongside the individual performance work.
If you're performing below what you know you're capable of and you can't figure out why, that's worth looking into.
Tell me what’s going on, what you’re dealing with, what you’ve already tried. We’ll figure out whether this is the right fit.