About
Award-winning psychologist, speaker, author, anxiety expert, and self-proclaimed happiness quester on a mission to help people live better lives.
Courage. Curiosity. Compassion.
Those are my guiding principles.
I believe wholeheartedly that following them has put me on the path to a good life, which in my book, is a bold one. A life in which fear does not make my decisions. One in which I seek out and value new experiences. A life characterized by experimentation, testing out what will happen if...and pushing the limits of what is possible for me.
I know how our minds skew our perceptions, warp our thinking, and try to convince us to stay inside our comfort zones. I refuse to fall for those tricks.
Time is our most precious, limited resource. I want to spend mine living fully, learning continually, and changing the way people think.
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My Professional Bio
I earned my PhD in clinical psychology in 2007 from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which is where I began studying and treating anxiety disorders I did my internship at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City before joining the staff at Omaha Children’s Hospital to help develop their dedicated anxiety services. In 2009, I returned to Kansas City to serve as a senior staff psychologist at the Kansas City Center for Anxiety Treatment. I ventured out on my own in 2017 and have had a private practice since.
In addition to clinical work, I have been involved in a number of other scholarly activities including:
Being an adjunct assistant professor at Kansas City University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Providing supervision and trainings for students and other professionals.
Publishing research, book chapters, and a book (Childhood Anxiety Disorders).
Presenting workshops and trainings on local and national levels.
Helping plan and produce local and national conferences.
I have been actively involved with the Anxiety and Depression Assocation of America since graduate school and was honored to receive their 2023 Special Recognition Award, in large part for my public outreach efforts.
I am passionate about using psychology and applied neuroscience to help people live better lives. That passion led me to co-found Peak Mind: The Center for Psychological Strength in 2019 and to prioritize speaking and writing for wider audiences.
The Full Story
Prologue
I was born with a rare degenerative retinal disease that makes me legally - and increasingly - blind.
Only I didn’t know that at first.
The Early Years
I grew up in southern Arkansas. The oldest of 3, I was a bossy girl who was good at school and loved to dance. It started to become apparent in late elementary school that my vision wasn’t quite normal, but it wasn’t really a big deal. I didn’t even need glasses.
Teenage Angst
I started to have trouble seeing things like the chalkboard or street signs. Glasses helped a bit, but not really. Things just weren’t there in my visual field. I morphed into a pretty insecure teen who worried a lot about being judged. I desperately wanted to be cool, so I worked hard to keep my vision a secret and to downplay my natural nerdy tendencies. I got good at faking normal sight and masking who I really am.
Isn’t It Ironic?
Fast forward to graduate school. I worked in a research lab that studied adolescent social anxiety. As I pored over articles and books, I saw myself reflected in those pages. All of a sudden, my experiences made so much more sense. I was socially anxious and that’s why my confidence had been lacking. At UNL, I was surrounded by people like me, and I began to embrace the fact that nerdy is cool. That confidence boost, coupled with what I was learning about anxiety, helped me begin to flourish.
Things Started to Change
My vision had been pretty stable since middle school, and my doctors, who still didn’t know what was wrong with my eyes, assured me that nothing would change. They were wrong. During my internship year my vision started to noticeably decline. I began to recognize the warning signs that a shift was coming, and each one was devastating.
Life Is Good…Or So I Thought
After a short stint in Omaha, I ended up back in Kansas City, doing full-time anxiety work and loving it. Social anxiety was a pretty distant memory for me. I felt confident in a lot of ways, except about my vision. I worked hard to pass for normal, and very few people knew the real deal. I thought life was pretty good, and I wasn’t really aware how much my vision affected me deep down.
The Low Point
Over time, my vision declined to the point where I could no longer drive. That, for me, was a big blow, a defining moment with a stark contrast between the Before and the After. I could no longer pretend. I was scared, and I was sad. I was convinced that people would shun me, professionally and personally, when they saw my “flaw.” I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to do the things I wanted to and, ultimately, that there was no way I could be happy with blindness. I was stuck and wallowing in grief and fear.
My Blind Quest for Happiness
A nice side effect of my job is that I have excellent coping skills. Unfortunately, they just weren’t enough anymore. I finally got so tired of being miserable, though, that I decided that something had to change. I didn’t know what else to do, so I did the only thing I could think of. I dove into science - the science of happiness, specifically - looking for answers. I started experimenting and seeing what worked.
Becoming Courageous…and Confident
I began to be open about my vision and - shockingly - each time I did, it got easier and NO ONE seemed to judge. I began to feel less ashamed, which, honestly, I hadn’t even realized I was carrying around with me. Those moments, along with other things like seeking out new experiences and practicing mindfulness, helped me feel truly comfortable in my own skin.
Life, By Design
Somewhere in there, I encountered the field of life design, and it rocked my world. It challenged my foundational assumptions about how to live life. I felt like Neo seeing the Matrix for the first time and knew there was no turning back.
Striking Out
Armed with a budding hope that my vision did not have to hold me back and a new understanding of the rules of life, I decided to venture out on my own and start a private practice. A couple years later, my long-time friend from grad school, Dr. April Seifert, and I realized our shared passion for using psychology and life design to help others live better lives and we founded Peak Mind: The Center for Psychological Strength.
A New Era
Everything - coming out as disabled, the science of happiness, life design, my psychology background, entrepreneurship - coalesced into this beautiful new world. I now have a diagnosis for my particular brand of vision loss, but I still don’t know how bad it will get, and there are currently no treatments. Despite my vision being worse than it’s ever been, I am no longer scared, sad, or ashamed. I am living a bold life and am on a mission to help others do the same.
If you’re interested in getting to know more about me, my work, and my approach to psychology and life, you can check out some of these interviews and articles.
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