Here’s how a session goes. You’ll bring me a question — should I quit, should I move, should I get divorced, should I write the book. And I’ll spend most of our hour ignoring the question you asked, because the job is almost never the job and the marriage is almost never the marriage. The question you walked in with is usually a decoy you built to keep yourself from deciding. I’ve spent thirty years taking those apart. You’ll leave knowing what you’re actually choosing between, what I think you should do, and why.

What people book me for

I don’t know what to do next. You’re successful enough to keep doing what you’re doing and unhappy enough that you don’t want to. You can’t see the answer from inside your own life, and I can. I want to write, but I don’t know what to say. You don’t have writer’s block, you have self-protection. I’ve spent twenty-five years writing the sentences other people were afraid to write, and I can find the one you’re avoiding. My career isn’t working. Usually the resume is fine and the real problem is that you built a career around someone else’s definition of success. Once you see that, the practical pieces get easy. I’m worried about my kid. Bright and stalled — choosing a major, a career, recovering from a false start. Often the most useful thing I do is get a parent to stop solving the wrong problem.

What it’s like to work with me

The most common unspoken thought in a therapist’s office is just tell me what to do. A therapist won’t, because that’s not the job. I will, because that is the job. I listen closely — closely enough to hear the thing your defenses are already moving to cover — and then I tell you what I think. I’m who you call when you want the true thing said out loud, faster than you can talk yourself out of hearing it. “People call her blunt, but what’s really happening is she says the true thing faster than your defenses can block it.”

Why me

I’ve spent most of my life making decisions people thought were reckless. I started companies and closed companies, got divorced and remarried, moved across the country twice, homeschooled my kids, and went back into research in my fifties. Inc. called me the world’s most influential guidance counselor. My authority isn’t that I always chose right — it’s that I’ve lived through the consequences of the times I didn’t, which is exactly what lets me tell the difference between fear and information when you can’t. “I booked a call at the start of the pandemic and it was so harsh I swore her off for years. She’d told me I’d be happiest leaving my business to be home with a kid. We had the child — and she was right about every part of it.”

One session

Most sessions are an hour, and most people only need one. I don’t sell packages. I get to the core problem fast, and once you can see it, what to do is usually obvious — you were never confused about your options, you were confused about which decision you were actually making.