– Services
Clarity at the top is entirely possible
Executive presence, leadership clarity, and the psychological edge to lead at the highest level.
You built something. Now the thing that built it is getting in your way.
The traits that got you here — the drive, the reactivity, the relentless inner critic — often become liabilities at scale.
You're making high-stakes decisions daily, often in isolation, carrying pressures that the people around you can't fully understand. I’ve worked with Silicon Valley founders, entrepreneurs, and high-performers since 2013 — bringing clinical depth to the specific psychological pressures of building something.
You may benefit from therapy if you experience…
…emotional reactivity in high-pressure moments — board meetings, fundraising, co-founder conflict…
…a gap between how you come across in the room and the leader you know you're capable of being…
…difficulty commanding authority without tipping into control or reactivity…
…an inner critic that drives your performance but also drives burnout and an inability to delegate…
…difficulty making the transition from founder to CEO — part of you is still running things like it's year one…
…losing the trust of your team without knowing exactly why…
…conflict avoidance or conflict intensity that's affecting your most important relationships…
…relationships at home that are suffering in ways that feel impossible to address…
…a persistent sense that something is off — even when the metrics say you're winning…
…difficulty trusting others enough to let go…
…an inability to slow down, even when you want to…
As a result of therapy, you can experience:
A restored sense of calm and clarity — even under pressure
Decisions that come from intention rather than reactivity
A stronger, more grounded executive presence — one that people follow without being pushed
The ability to lead from Self-energy rather than from your most triggered parts
The ability to hold authority without rigidity, and warmth without losing respect
Healthier, more connected relationships — at work and at home
Relief from the background hum of anxiety or the feeling that something is always wrong
Leadership that comes from clarity rather than fear, status, or the need to prove something
A sustainable way of operating at a high level without burning out
I use a blend of the most effective therapies available. These are all evidence-based — validated by repeated academic research — and I weave them together based on what works for you individually. These modalities include:
Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy
EMDR
Somatic Experiencing
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Mindset and performance-focused work
Executive presence and leadership development
IFS Explanation: IFS holds that the mind is a system of distinct parts — each with its own logic, role, and history. For founders who think in systems, IFS is immediately legible. When you're reacting in a board meeting, delegating poorly, or lying awake at 2am, there's usually a part driving that behavior — often one that's been protecting you since long before you started your company. IFS therapy helps you understand what each part is protecting, unburden the parts that are stuck in old patterns, and lead from a place of clarity and calm — what IFS calls Self-leadership.
EMDR Explanation: EMDR is a brain-based therapy particularly effective for processing the experiences that are fueling present-day reactivity. You don't have to have had a dramatic traumatic event for EMDR to be relevant — founders often carry smaller accumulated experiences (early failures, shame, critical parents, impossible standards) that are still being activated in high-pressure situations today. EMDR helps take the emotional charge out of those memories so they stop running the show.
SE Explanation: Somatic Experiencing works with the body's physiological response to stress and threat. Founders often operate in chronically activated nervous systems — the same fight-or-flight state that's useful in a crisis becomes the default setting. SE helps discharge accumulated stress from the body and build the capacity for regulated, grounded functioning even under pressure.
ACT Explanation: ACT builds psychological flexibility — the ability to act from your values and commitments even in the presence of difficult thoughts, anxiety, or uncertainty. Particularly useful for founders navigating ambiguity, risk, and the pressure of high-visibility decisions.
CBT Explanation: Targeted work on the thought patterns and behavioral cycles maintaining anxiety, avoidance, perfectionism, or performance blocks. Practical, structured, and measurable.
Mindset/Performance Explanation: Integrating psychological insight with the practical realities of building and leading — because the goal isn't just healing, it's operating at your highest level sustainably.
Executive presence and leadership development explanation: Much of what limits executive effectiveness isn't strategy — it's the psychological patterns underneath it. We work directly on presence, communication, emotional regulation under pressure, and the internal dynamics that shape how you show up in the room.
As a result of therapy, you can experience:
For founders who can't slow down for the traditional weekly appointment model, I also offer therapy intensives — concentrated, immersive work over one or two days. Six hours of deep therapeutic work per day, designed for those facing a specific inflection point: a major transition, a long-standing pattern, a decision that needs clarity before it costs more.
Therapy for Founders in the Bay Area: What to Expect
Working with a therapist as a founder is different from traditional therapy in one important way: the context matters. The pressures of the cap table, the loneliness of the CEO role, the co-founder dynamics, the way your company's survival can feel existentially tied to your own identity — these are not things most therapists understand. John has worked with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs since 2013 and understands this world from the inside. Sessions are fully confidential. Nothing you share leaves the room. John is not a coach, advisor, board member, or investor — he has no stake in the outcome, which means you can think out loud without consequences. Therapy with John draws from IFS, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, ACT, CBT, and mindset work — integrated based on what your presenting challenges call for. Sessions are available in-person in Oakland and via telehealth anywhere in California.
Why Founders Benefit from IFS Therapy
Internal Family Systems therapy is particularly well-suited to the founder psychology. IFS operates on the premise that the mind is a system of distinct parts — and that understanding the system is how you change it. Founders are systems thinkers by nature. The framework tends to click quickly. The parts that drive success — the perfectionist, the relentless driver, the skeptic, the one who never lets up — often began as survival strategies long before the company did. In IFS, the goal isn't to eliminate these parts. It's to understand what they're protecting, unburden them from extreme roles, and access the calm, clear leadership capacity that IFS calls Self. The result is decision-making that comes from clarity rather than from whichever part happens to be loudest in the room.
Executive Presence & Leadership Development Through Therapy
Executive presence is usually treated as a performance problem — something to fix with a speaking coach, a communication framework, or a leadership course. And sometimes those things help. But for high-level leaders, the ceiling is rarely a skills gap. It's a psychological one.
The way you hold authority in a room, the speed at which you regulate when challenged, the degree to which your team trusts your judgment under pressure — these are downstream of how your nervous system and your internal world are organized. A leader who collapses under confrontation, overcontrols in ambiguity, or loses the room when they feel dismissed isn't lacking a technique. They're running an old pattern that made perfect sense once and no longer serves them.
This is what therapy can do that coaching cannot: it works at the root system. Not just what you're doing, but what's driving it — the parts of you that are still operating on survival logic from decades ago, the protective mechanisms that were assets early in your career and liabilities now, the unresolved experiences that are still coloring how you read a room, respond to a board, or react to a direct report who reminds you of someone.
When those patterns shift at depth, presence follows. Not as a performance, but as a natural expression of who you actually are when you're not reacting. That's the kind of leadership that's felt in a room before a word is said.
Therapy Intensives for Entrepreneurs
For founders at a specific inflection point — a liquidity event, a leadership transition, a cofounder conflict, or a pattern that's been affecting performance for too long — a therapy intensive can be more effective than months of weekly sessions. John offers two-day intensives (six hours per day) for individuals who need concentrated, deep therapeutic work in a compressed timeframe. Available in San Francisco or virtually. Learn more on the therapy intensives page.
