Career-Focused Therapy
Psychotherapy for the emotional and psychological dimensions of work, career, and inflection points in your working life.
Why Career-Focused Therapy?
For many of us, work is central to our lives. At its best, it provides not only income but also purpose, identity, and satisfaction. At other times, work can become a source of anxiety, conflict, or exhaustion. Because careers unfold within the rest of our lives, concerns about work are often intertwined with relationships, health, culture, family responsibilities, social class, financial security, values, and ideas about who we are or should become.
You may seek therapy while facing an immediate career decision or disruption, or because something about your working life has felt unsustainable for a long time. You may know that something needs to change without yet knowing what or how.
Common Areas of Focus
Career exploration and choice
Career interests, values, and fit
School-to-work transitions
Adjustment to new work roles and responsibilities
Career self-management and proactive strategies
Meaning, identity, and fulfillment in work
Insight into underlying career-related emotions, thoughts, and behaviors
Job dissatisfaction, workplace stress or conflict, and difficult work environments
Burnout, work-life balance, and career sustainability
Job insecurity and uncertainty about the future of your field or industry
Career changes, pivots, shocks, and other inflection points
Coping with layoffs, job loss, and unemployment
The transition from work to retirement
What is Career-Focused Therapy?
Career-focused therapy is individual psychotherapy that attends to the role of work and career in your psychological life. It can help you understand career-related emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and recurring patterns; clarify what matters to you; strengthen coping and decision-making; and consider realistic ways forward.
Although work or career may be the central concern, our work is not limited to what happens on the job. We may also consider connections with your mental health, relationships, identities, culture, family, finances, physical well-being, and broader life circumstances. Therapy may remain closely focused on a career concern, address wider patterns across your life, or shift in emphasis as your needs evolve.
What Career-Focused Therapy is NOT
Career-focused therapy is not the same as career counseling or coaching, which often focus on occupational information, job-search strategy, professional development, and the practical steps involved in finding or advancing in work. Career-focused psychotherapy places greater emphasis on emotional well-being, identity, relationships, behavioral patterns, psychological barriers, and the broader meaning and consequences of career concerns.
I do not provide tactical services such as résumé writing, job-search planning, interview coaching, networking strategy, or salary negotiation advice. I may, however, work with you to clarify and evaluate possible next career steps together. My role is to help you better understand what you want, what may be keeping you stuck, and how you can make decisions and take action in ways that fit with your life as a whole.
Professional Background
I am a member of the Society for Vocational Psychology, a section of the American Psychological Association’s Society of Counseling Psychology (Division 17). Vocational psychology examines how people make career decisions, experience work, develop across their working lives, and respond to career transitions and disruptions.
I also remain active as a vocational psychology researcher. My peer-reviewed scholarship examines career self-management, proactive career strategies, career sustainability, and psychological and financial coping during unemployment. This background helps me integrate research and theory on career development with psychotherapy tailored to each client’s needs and circumstances.
Where Career and Finances Intersect
I also bring specific expertise in financial therapy, and career and financial concerns do not need to be addressed as separate areas of therapy. Career decisions often carry financial consequences, while financial circumstances can shape which career options feel possible. When relevant, our work can address the connections among career, income, identity, culture, family expectations, social class, values, and financial security.
Scheduling and Meeting Options
Career-focused therapy is offered within my individual psychotherapy practice. I generally recommend meeting weekly at the beginning of therapy so that we can establish continuity and momentum. Depending on your needs and the course of our work, sessions may later move to every other week or a less frequent schedule.
I offer in-person therapy at my Dupont Circle office in Washington, D.C., as well as virtual therapy for clients in D.C., the broader DMV area, and participating PSYPACT states.
Interested in Working Together?
A free 20-minute consultation gives us an opportunity to briefly discuss what you are looking for, answer initial questions, and consider whether career-focused therapy may be a good fit.