Athletes and Sport Psychology
You've put in the physical work. You've trained hard, refined your technique, and built the kind of conditioning that takes years of commitment. However, I bet there are moments, maybe before a big competition or game, in the middle of a slump, or after an injury, when the mental side of your sport feels completely out of control. That's where sport psychology comes in. When the drive, determination, and physical components are not enough.
I work with athletes at all levels, from competitive high school and college athletes to adult recreational competitors and professionals. I also bring something most sport psychologists don't: a personal athletic history. I competed in figure skating and dance throughout my childhood and adolescence and have stayed active in movement throughout my adult life. I understand the psychology of athletic identity, the particular pressure of performance, and what it actually feels like when things just don’t quite go right.
No matter what sport, athletes have unique needs for psychological support.
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Manage nerves and performance anxiety.
Even elite athletes experience pre-competition nerves. That's normal and in the right amount, it's useful. Performance anxiety becomes a problem when it crosses the threshold from activating and motivating to paralyzing, when the nerves are so loud they pull you out of the moment, tighten your body, disrupt your timing, and undermine the performance you trained for.
Using behavioral and cognitive techniques with a strong evidence base in sport performance, we will work on managing the arousal response, building pre-performance routines that create consistency, and developing the mental flexibility to recover quickly when things don't go as planned. The goal isn't to eliminate nerves. It's to make them work for you instead of against you.
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Perfectionism.
Perfectionism is one of the most common and most misunderstood mental barriers for athletes. The belief that accepting anything less than perfect is the same as giving up is incredibly common in a competitive environment. Unfortunately, it creates a relationship with performance that's exhausting and ultimately counterproductive.
Research consistently shows that self-compassion and the ability to tolerate mistakes are associated with better performance over time, not worse. That doesn’t mean we stay there and never improve; it means that focusing on the negative doesn’t bring us forward. We don't lower your standards. We change the relationship you have with yourself when you fail to meet them, which is what actually allows you to keep improving.
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Atheltic Identity and Life Balance
For athletes whose entire sense of self is wrapped up in their sport, the psychological stakes of performance are extraordinarily high. Every bad practice, every loss, every injury carries weight far beyond the event itself. The mess up becomes a global reflection of the athlete. This level of over-identification with sport increases anxiety, reduces enjoyment, and makes setbacks much harder to recover from.
We work on building out a fuller sense of who you are beyond your athletic identity. This doesn't take away your commitment to your sport. It actually tends to reduce the performance pressure that's been getting in the way, because your entire self worth is no longer on the line every time you compete.
What Progress Looks Like
Athletes I work with describe showing up to competition feeling more present and more themselves. The mental chatter quiets. They trust their training. They recover from mistakes faster and stop letting one bad moment bleed into the rest of the performance. The work they've put into their physical preparation finally starts to show up the way it should.
