You’ve been practicing hard all week, you know exactly what you’re supposed to do, but for some terrible reason, you can’t.
01 / Performance and anxietyTherapy for Athletes in Iowa City
The pass used to leave your hand before you finished thinking about it, the shot used to naturally flow when you caught the pass, or you used to take off immediately when the gun went off. Now your arm freezes halfway through, or your wrist jerks at release, or you stall after you hear the “bang.” The ball fizzles out ten feet in front of you, you airball it, or you find yourself unable to finish the race. Your coach is calling it a slump, but you’ve had slumps before, and this one feels like an entirely different issue.
02 / what it can feel likeWhen your body stops following through
Athletes sometimes call it the yips. Chris Mesagno, a sport psychology researcher at Victoria University, described it in May 2026 as a movement disorder, involuntary muscle spasms that break up a small practiced motion, the kind your fingers and hands make thousands of times in sports. For example, golfers get it over short putts, catchers get it on the toss back to the mound, and it turns up in basketball, tennis, archery, softball, and darts.
Other athletes reach out to me with their physical motions intact but their internal alarm system is running too hot. Your heart rate climbs too high on the walk to the line, and your breathing gets shallow and high up in your chest and throat. Your legs feel heavy in the blocks, and the speed you had at Wednesday’s practice is gone by the time the gun goes off in the race on Friday.
If your value within a room comes from how you perform on game day, a bad season can now feel as if it is a ruling on who you are at your core. That verdict can land as true even when your coach and teammates have said nothing at all.
To recognize ourselves in a struggling state is acceptance that it's real, and also, that it can change...
03 / How I Work with itThree approaches
In my work with athletes, freezing up usually comes from several experiences piling into one overwhelming moment, so I use more than one approach.
EMDR therapy can work on the specific moment underneath it: an injury, a missed shot in a big game, or a childhood car ride home with a parent yelling about how you played. Once a memory stops hitting with the strength it has now, the flinch your body makes during warmups can settle, and the memory becomes something you made it through.
DBT skills work gives you something repeatable to practice between our sessions, with go-to skills for warmups, halftime, the middle of a game, or the night before one.
NARM therapy looks at the older layers underneath the performance issues: your sense of worth, your identity, your need for approval, and the pressure you put on yourself. Many of those patterns may have formed long ago, and NARM can help you loosen the ones that no longer serve you.
04 / The logisticsWhat it costs and how long it takes
I do not bill insurance, so you and I decide how your care goes. No insurance company sets a limit on the sessions you get.
You can still ask your insurer to pay you back. I will give you a superbill, which is an itemized receipt you send to them yourself.
You can also ask for a Good Faith Estimate before we start, and the No Surprises Act gives you the right to one. It lists what your care is likely to cost.
How long therapy takes is different for every client. One clear goal may take a handful of sessions, and patterns you have carried since childhood can take longer. I will give you my thoughts after the first few sessions, rather than a firm number on day one.
Free
Free Consultation
A relaxed, 15-minute talk about what you need and whether we fit. By phone, by video, or in person.
$185
Therapy Sessions
Weekly 53-minute sessions shaped around your needs, in Iowa City or by telehealth in Iowa and North Carolina.
Free DownloadThe Grounding Guide
A one page set of grounding tools you can use the next time your body runs ahead of you.
NewsletterSubscribe to Solace
New articles and creative work on mental health, sent to your inbox.
05 / Reach outA fifteen-minute call, and no obligation afterwards
Tell me what has been going on, and what you hope therapy with me can change. If I am not the right fit, I will tell you early and help you find a clinician who is.