welcome to my private practice website.
I am a licensed Psychologist in Austin, Texas offering individual psychotherapy both in-person or through telehealth (video or telephone). I have been practicing for more than two decades, including twenty-one years of service at the Veterans Health Administration where my work largely focused on the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I early retired from the Austin VA Outpatient Clinic in March 2024 and bring to my private practice from that experience, a deepened engagement in the art and craft of psychotherapy.
As tech culture increasingly erodes human-to-human connections amid a polycrisis wrought with overwhelm and restlessness, uncertainty and doubt, good psychotherapy endures as a dynamic practice of relational humanity. Out of the collective trauma and change that shaped the pandemic and post-pandemic years—including the rise of generative AI—I have seen an increased demand for the type of psychotherapy I provide, particularly in-person psychotherapy. To me, the practice psychotherapy is like playing music, an intimate chamber music--a cello sonata--with the patient as the cellist, and I as the piano accompanist, providing structural support, attunement, and expressive counterpoint.
When asked about talk therapy in a 2025 interview, a favorite writer and practitioner, Mark Epstein M.D. responded: “When therapy is good, one thing it can be good for is that it’s a real relationship. And it can, at its best, be a surprising relationship that continues to provoke and enliven and nourish . . . . So psychotherapy is like a miracle in our culture — that two people could come together in a room with no purpose other than to talk about what’s happening between them or in each of their lives. So there’s a kind of comfort in it — which might really be what it’s good for” (“Why Does the Mind Keep Thinking That?” The Ezra Klein Show, July 11, 2025).
I completed my Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1990s, and returned to the ATX in 2004. My early career focus on veterans, men and women afflicted with PTSD [link to PTSD page in Specialties] provided a depth of experience and perspective in understanding trauma and treating a broad spectrum of human suffering. In 2009, responding to my own severe burnout treating PTSD, I attended a professional training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) with Jon Kabat-Zinn at the Omega Institute. Since that time, mindfulness [link to Mindfulness page in Specialties] and Buddhist psychology--especially mindful self-compassion—have deeply informed both my work and personal practice.
As the American Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron wrote: “The key is changing our habits and, in particular, the habits of our mind” (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, 1997)
My unique approach to psychotherapy is animated by a dynamic collage of more than two decades of clinical experience, my personal meditation practice, and a wide-ranging intellectual and aesthetic life. It draws from the psychotherapy literature-- psychoanalysis, mindfulness, trauma work, behavioral and cognitive therapies, as well as philosophy, social theory and non-fiction, from memoirs and biographies of artists to the psychological and spiritual effects of tech culture. I also draw inspiration and influence from other disciplines and forms including literature and poetry, art, music and film, design and design thinking, food, popular culture, and sports.
A particularly impactful book in the construction of my role as psychotherapist is Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being (2023) and his philosophy of being an “invisible coach”: deep listening and presence, the cultivation of stillness and spaciousness, a focus on authenticity, all oriented toward helping what is already present come into clearer, more robust form—something not unlike uncovering and awakening one’s Buddha-nature.
I provide short and long-term psychotherapy. Short-term work to provide psychoeducation, consultation, perspective, and/or time-limited work on a focused area of concern. More often, longer term, open-ended work is indicated to address pervasive personal concerns and struggles. I my experience, sustainable change is rarely linear or evenly paced. It unfolds over time through consistency, patience and engagement with the psychotherapeutic process. According to Thich Nhat Hanh “There can be no lotus flower without mud”
Testimony:
A patient worked with in my private practice for nearly a decade, later wrote: “I cannot emphasize enough that the combination of your ability to listen, ask good questions, empathize and compassionately challenge has been exactly what I needed. I cannot imagine a better back and forth than what we have had.”
A patient working on issues related to sexual addiction, grief and loss, paused after I asked a question and said: “Whoa, Mark, that is a great question, of all the therapists I’ve worked with in my life, you ask the best questions.”
A patient afflicted with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and working at a tech startup: “I was up all night talking with ChatGPT about my girlfriend situation, the advice was good, but it wasn’t as good as yours.”
A retired Lieutenant Colonel I worked with for much of my tenure at the VA reflected in one of our final sessions: “An effective clinician, of which you have been all these years, facilitates your listening to yourself as you are talking, communicating with yourself and getting a sense of action [or non-action].”
Thank you for considering my private practice
