How is therapy with a former attorney different from regular therapy?

You won't spend time translating your world or explaining why things feel the way they do. I practiced corporate law — I know what billable hour culture does to a person, what firm hierarchy feels like from the inside, what it means to have your sense of worth fused with your performance. That shared context changes the starting point of the work.

I'm high-functioning and successful. Do I really need therapy?

Functioning well and struggling privately aren't mutually exclusive — in fact they often go together. Many of the professionals I work with look, by every external measure, like they have it together. Underneath that there's exhaustion, disconnection, or a quiet erosion of meaning. Managing effectively doesn't mean nothing deeper is worth addressing.

Is this therapy focused on performance or productivity?

No — that's coaching, not therapy. What I do is depth-oriented work aimed at understanding what's actually happening beneath the surface: the emotional and relational patterns that shape your experience of your work, your relationships, and yourself. Some people find their functioning improves as a side effect. That's not the point.

What if I'm not sure whether what I'm experiencing is burnout?

That ambiguity is worth bringing in rather than waiting to resolve. Burnout in high-achieving professionals rarely announces itself clearly — more often it arrives as numbness, irritability, trouble switching off, or a low-grade question about whether this is really what you want your life to look like. You don't need a clear diagnosis. If something feels off, that's reason enough.

Do you work with professionals outside the legal field?

Yes. My background is in law, and I have particular fluency with that world — but the underlying dynamics of high-pressure professional identity show up across fields. I work with people in finance, medicine, consulting, and other demanding environments where the patterns are often strikingly similar.

Therapy for Lawyers & Professionals in NYC and Across New York & Florida

When your career becomes your identity

Working in a high-achieving profession can be intellectually rigorous, high-stakes, and emotionally demanding. Whether you're practicing law, working in finance, medicine, consulting, or any field where the pressure rarely turns off, the margin for error feels impossibly thin.

You may seem composed, capable, and successful on the outside while internally feeling a pressure that doesn’t lifts. You may be trying to find a way to make this sustainable, or you’re wondering whether to make a change altogether.

Many of the professionals I work with find themselves navigating some combination of chronic stress and burnout, perfectionism and fear of failure, shame around needing help, difficulty disconnecting from work, strain on relationships, and the lingering question of “who am I outside of what I do?”

High-achieving fields often reward endurance, self-sacrifice, and emotional suppression. Over time, this can create real distance from your own emotional life.

A therapist who understands this world

Before becoming a psychotherapist, I practiced corporate law after earning my JD from Columbia Law School. That experience gives me firsthand understanding of what it means to work in a culture that normalizes being constantly on: where performance is the currency, hierarchy shapes every interaction, and asking for help can feel like a liability.

If you're a lawyer specifically, you won't need to translate your work environment or professional language. We can begin from a place of shared understanding. And if you work in another high-stakes field, that same underlying culture (the pressure to perform, the identity fusion with success, the difficulty justifying rest) is something I understand and work with regularly.

Beyond burnout: identity, relationships, and emotional cost

While many professionals initially seek therapy for burnout, the work often opens into something deeper.

You may find it difficult to access your emotions outside of work, or notice a numbness that doesn't go away even when the pressure eases. Anxiety that followed you home from the office starts to feel like just how you are. Relationships suffer in ways that are hard to attribute to any single cause. And beneath all of it, there may be guilt about wanting a different pace, or even about having needs at all.

For some, professional pressure intersects with earlier relational patterns: perfectionism, conditional approval, or the belief that worth must be earned through performance. The drive that made you successful didn't come from nowhere, and understanding where it came from can change your relationship to it.

A depth-oriented approach

My work is psychodynamic, somatic, and trauma-informed.

Rather than focusing solely on stress management, we explore the emotional meaning of your work, how your career has shaped your sense of identity, the internalized expectations and self-criticism that drive you, and how constant pressure lives in the body as well as the mind. We look at relationship patterns inside and outside the workplace, including the ones that predate your career entirely.

This isn't performance-enhancement therapy or a space for optimizing productivity. It's a place to slow down and understand what's happening beneath the surface.

When career stress connects to earlier experiences

For some professionals, workplace strain resonates with something older: high expectations in family systems, emotional neglect or conditional approval, pressure to succeed as a means of belonging, or trauma histories that have been effectively masked by high functioning.

Therapy offers a place to understand how these layers interact. We won't pathologize ambition or suggest that success itself is the problem. Instead, we'll create room for a more sustainable and honest relationship with your work and with yourself.

Therapy that holds the whole person

Professionals come to therapy for many reasons, including: burnout and chronic stress, relationship challenges, trauma recovery, grief or life transitions, and questions around identity or purpose.

If you're a lawyer wondering whether burnout might be at the root of what you're experiencing, this post explores what's actually underneath it. Career is often where the conversation begins, but rarely where it ends.

This work typically takes place within individual therapy, though I also work with couples where relevant. If you're a professional seeking therapy in NYC or via telehealth across New York and Florida, I'd welcome the chance to connect.

You won't spend time translating your world or explaining why things feel the way they do. I practiced corporate law — I know what billable hour culture does to a person, what firm hierarchy feels like from the inside, what it means to have your sense of worth fused with your performance. That shared context changes the starting point of the work.
Functioning well and struggling privately aren't mutually exclusive — in fact they often go together. Many of the professionals I work with look, by every external measure, like they have it together. Underneath that there's exhaustion, disconnection, or a quiet erosion of meaning. Managing effectively doesn't mean nothing deeper is worth addressing.
No, that's coaching, not therapy. What I do is depth-oriented work aimed at understanding what's actually happening beneath the surface: the emotional and relational patterns that shape your experience of your work, your relationships, and yourself. Some people find their functioning improves as a side effect. That's not the point.
That ambiguity is worth bringing in rather than waiting to resolve. Burnout in high-achieving professionals rarely announces itself clearly — more often it arrives as numbness, irritability, trouble switching off, or a low-grade question about whether this is really what you want your life to look like. You don't need a clear diagnosis. If something feels off, that's reason enough.
Yes. My background is in law, and I have particular fluency with that world — but the underlying dynamics of high-pressure professional identity show up across fields. I work with people in finance, medicine, consulting, and other demanding environments where the patterns are often strikingly similar.

Let's Connect