Full Course Description

Performance Psychology Across the Lifespan

Your highest-stakes clients aren't always who you'd expect.

The college athlete who freezes in the moments that count. The medical professional who hasn't slept the night before a complex case. The attorney pacing before opening arguments. The business owner who can't shut off after the work day ends. They walk into your office looking different — but underneath, you're treating the same client. Your training just didn't tell you that.

Performance pressure, identity fusion, anxiety under observation, fear of public failure or embarrassment, and the cost of consistent execution — these don't belong to just athletes. They show up in physicians, executives, litigators, performers, and the high-achievers your colleagues keep referring to you because nobody else seems to get it.

In this session, Dr. Kris Eiring — a licensed psychologist with more than two decades treating elite athletes alongside medical professionals, attorneys, and executives — gives you a unified clinical framework that travels across populations. You'll learn to recognize the shared patterns, adapt your interventions to the specific context, and walk back into your practice on Monday with strategies you can apply across half your caseload — whether the client wears cleats, a stethoscope, a courtroom suit, or a startup hoodie.

This is the session that turns 'I see whoever walks in the door' into 'I'm the clinician high-achievers seek out.

Program Information

Objectives

Apply core performance psychology interventions — including cognitive restructuring, attention regulation, and confidence-building strategies — to clients across athletic, medical, legal, and business contexts.
Analyze the shared clinical patterns of performance pressure, identity fusion, and anxiety under observation as they present across high-achieving client populations.
Implement clinical strategies to support clients experiencing identity disruption during career transition, role loss, or shifts in performance status.

Outline

Part 1: One mind, many arenas — recognizing the shared clinical patterns

Performance pressure affects surgeons, athletes, musicians, attorneys, executives, and performers alike in your office.
Identity fusion across contexts — when your client doesn't know who they are when they're not performing or under pressure
Anxiety under observation — why standard anxiety frameworks underestimate clients whose work is watched, scored, or judged in public
The presentations clinicians miss — high-achievers in your caseload who don't identify as performers but are dealing with the same clinical picture

Part 2: The Pillars of Elite PerformanceCore interventions that travel across populations

Awareness:

Emotional Regulation Under pressure
Self-talk and cognitive restructuring strategies — adapted for the athlete pre-competition, the attorney pre-trial, the surgeon pre-procedure, the executive pre-presentation
Concentration and focus training — building attention regulation as a clinical skill clients can practice between sessions
Confidence-building protocols — separating confidence from outcome in any high-stakes context, and rebuilding it after public setback or failure
Recovery strategies — clinical tools for emotional reset between high-pressure events, before exhaustion becomes burnout

Part 3: Identity, transition, and adapting your practice for the cross-population caseload

Identity disruption when performance status shifts — retirement, demotion, forced exit, voluntary pivot, aging out
Career transition strategies — supporting clients through grief, purpose loss, and the redefinition work that follows
Cross-population fluency in session — what shifts in language, framing, and intervention when moving between athletic, medical, legal, and business clients
Becoming the clinician high-achievers stay with — practical adjustments that signal "I get you" to a client whose specific world is rarely understood in clinical settings

Target Audience

Psychologists
Licensed Professional Counselors (LPCs / LMHCs)
Licensed Clinical Social Workers (LCSWs)
Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs)
Psychiatrists and Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners
Sport psychologists and licensed performance consultants

Copyright : 10/08/2026

Eating Disorders in Athletes

You've seen this athlete in your office before — even if she didn't tell you why she came.

The college runner whose times keep dropping but who looks more depleted every visit. The wrestler explaining his cutting routine like it's just part of the sport. The dancer counting calories with the same precision she counts beats. The endurance athlete insisting "this is what my body needs to perform" — even as her labs tell a different story.

Eating disorders in athletes are among the most underrecognized, misdiagnosed, and clinically high-risk presentations you'll encounter. The athletic context masks the symptoms. The performance pressure rewards the behavior. The medical and physiological complications — including Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) — outpace what most general mental health clinicians were trained to recognize. And the stakes are real: eating disorders carry one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric condition, and athletes are among the most vulnerable populations.

Mental health clinicians almost always work alongside a registered dietitian when treating athlete eating disorders — but rarely understand what the dietitian is actually doing, what to ask for, what the nutritional and physiological data are telling them, or how to coordinate as part of the broader treatment team.

In this 2-hour session, Jennifer Wilke, RD, CEDS-S, CSSD — a registered dietitian with over 15 years of expertise in eating disorders and sports performance nutrition — gives you the framework, language, and clinical lens to recognize disordered eating in athletes, understand REDs and energy availability, coordinate confidently with the medical and nutritional team, and support athletes through the full recovery arc.

Walk away equipped to spot what others miss, coordinate care with confidence, and protect your athlete clients across the full treatment system.

Program Information

Objectives

Identify the clinical presentations, sport-specific risk factors, and screening considerations for eating disorders in athletic populations, including Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs).
Apply treatment strategies adapted for athletes with eating disorders, including therapeutic alliance-building, exercise management during recovery, and coordination of care with coaches, parents, and the athletic support system.
Implement clinical decision-making frameworks for levels of care, return-to-sport readiness, and relapse prevention with athletes in recovery from eating disorders.

Outline

Part 1: Recognition — what's hiding behind elite training habits

Why standard eating disorder screening misses athletes, and what nutritional and behavioral patterns to watch for
Sport-specific risk: aesthetic, weight-class, and endurance sport environments
The presentations that look like dedication but signal pathology — restrictive eating, compulsive exercise, body composition fixation, and "clean eating" as a clinical mask
Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) — what every mental health clinician needs to understand about energy availability, the IOC REDs framework, and the medical risks
Differential considerations: disordered eating, clinical eating disorder, or medical emergency

Part 2: Coordinated care — working as part of the treatment team

What the dietitian is actually doing in eating disorder treatment, and what to ask for as the clinician on the team
Managing exercise during treatment — the clinical question with no easy answer, and how it gets decided
Reading the nutritional and physiological data: what to do with the labs, body composition data, and clearance recommendations you receive
Coordinating across coaches, parents, athletic trainers, sports medicine physicians, and dietitians without losing the client's therapeutic relationship
Co-occurring conditions: how nutritional status interacts with depression, anxiety, OCD, and the athlete's broader mental health picture

Part 3: Recovery, return, and the long view

The return-to-sport decision: clinical, medical, nutritional, and psychological criteria, and the clinician's role in the conversation
Building a sustainable recovery in athletes whose identity, scholarship, livelihood, or career may depend on continuing to compete
Relapse prevention specific to athletes, including season transitions, injuries, and retirement
When to refer up the level of care, when to escalate to medical intervention, and when to recognize you are the right clinician
Risks and limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Case Managers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 10/08/2026

DBT as a Skills-Based, Performance-Enhancing Model to Support Athletes, Coaches & Parents in High-Performance Environments

Join Carrie Farrell, LMHC, former Division 1 Softball coach, accomplished athlete, renown speaker, and sought after therapist by athletes, their families, sports facilities and institutions. In this training, you’ll learn skills to support athletes from the perspectives of DBT that keeps them mentally healthy, happy and loving their sport.

Walk away equipped to:

Offer real solutions and empathy to athletes facing extreme pressure, burnout, and overcommitment
Identify when athletes are struggling with mental health diagnoses
Support young athletes suffering in silence and those with ‘troubled’ or chaotic home lives
Help navigate identity common challenges for parents, coaches and athletes with DBT skills

Whether you’re working with kids, teens and adults, you’ll walk away with concrete education and training sets you apart.

Program Information

Objectives

Explore DBT techniques that can support athletes struggling with mental health problems.
Examine the common challenges faced by coaches, athletes, and parents of athletes.
Explore how DBT skills training can enhance performance.
Describe DBT skills that support coaches, athletes, and parents of athletes.

Outline

Applying Core DBT Skills to Athletic Counseling

Why DBT works with athletes
High emotion + high performance environments
Need for rapid recovery vs. long processing
Present-moment awareness in competition
Non-judgmental performance review
“One play at a time” mindset
Handling pressure, failure, injury, uncertainty
Crisis vs. discomfort distinction
Opposite action in performance
Communication in team environments
Balancing assertiveness and respect

Skills Training for Working with Coaches, Parents & Athletes

Coaches
- DBT Applications:
  - Validation vs. enabling
  - Delivering feedback without escalation
  - Regulating own reactions under pressure
- Skills in action:
  - Modeling emotional control
  - Structured communication
  - Common challenges:
  - Reactivity, favoritism perception, burnout
Parents of Athletes
- DBT Applications:
  - Managing expectations and identity attachment
  - Emotion regulation during competition
  - Effective communication with athlete + coach
- Skills in action:
  - Validation at home
  - Reducing performance-based worth messaging
  - Common challenges:
  - Over-identification with athlete success
  - Sideline behavior
  - Post-game conversations
Athletes
- DBT Applications:
  - Managing performance anxiety
  - Handling mistakes and failure
  - Building emotional resilience
- Skills in action:
  - Reset routines
  - Self-talk regulation
  - Identity beyond sport
- Common challenges:
  - Perfectionism
  - Fear of failure
  - Emotional swings tied to performance

Integration, Implementation & Takeaways

How to teach DBT skills in athletic environments
Building a culture of mental skills
Simple integration strategies
Scaling beyond 1:1 counseling
Key message: Emotional control = competitive advantage

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Physicians
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals
Physical Therapists
Physical Therapist Assistants
Occupational Therapists
Occupational Therapy Assistants
Exercise Physiologists
Athletic Trainers

Copyright : 10/08/2026

When the Body Stops Cooperating

You've sat across from this client before.

The hand surgeon whose injury ended a career he spent twenty years building. The mother who can't pick up her child after the spine injury. The marathon runner spiraling about a stress fracture that should have healed weeks ago. The executive sidelined by a cardiac event, watching his company move on without him. The dancer told she'll never perform again.

They're not in your office because of the injury. They're in your office because of what the injury means.

Identity collapse. Depression. Anxiety. Grief that no one around them takes seriously, because the medical team has "good news" and the body is "healing nicely." And underneath it all, the question they can't say out loud: who am I if I can't do this anymore?

Most clinical training doesn't prepare you for any of this. Injury psychology is a footnote in graduate school — if it's covered at all. Standard depression, grief and anxiety frameworks underperform. And yet these clients are in every caseload — the athletes, yes, but also the surgeons, the performers, the laborers, the parents, the everyday clients whose identity was wired to a body that has now changed.

In this session, Dr. DJ Moran — licensed clinical psychologist, past president of the international ACT community, and author of Breathe and Bring the Heat — brings contemporary behavioral science to one of the most underrecognized clinical presentations in mental health practice. You'll walk away with clinical strategies for identity disruption, psychological flexibility tools for clients navigating uncertain recovery, and frameworks for the hardest decisions in this work: when to support a return, when to support a transition, and how to treat the client who is quietly grieving a body, a future, and a version of themselves that no longer exists.

Program Information

Objectives

Identify the clinical presentations following life-changing injury — including identity disruption, depression, fear, and anticipatory grief — and differentiate them from the medical and physical recovery process.
Apply psychological flexibility and values-based clinical strategies to support clients navigating injury, recovery, and uncertainty across athletic, professional, and everyday populations.
Implement clinical decision-making frameworks for return-to-work, return-to-performance, and identity reinvention conversations with clients facing the long-term consequences of injury.

Outline

What you're actually treating — the psychological landscape of life-changing injury

Identity fusion across populations — when a client's sense of self is wired to a body that has now changed
Recognizing the clinical presentations underneath the injury: depression, anxiety, grief, and the loss of an imagined future
Fear and avoidance as clinical phenomena — why they persist long after physical recovery
Why standard depression, anxiety, and grief frameworks underperform with this population

Clinical strategies — applying contemporary behavioral science

Values-based interventions when a client's primary identity has been pulled out from under them
Psychological flexibility tools for clients navigating uncertainty, setbacks, and nonlinear recovery
Working with acceptance, mindfulness, and committed action in the context of injury and rehabilitation
Building therapeutic alliance with clients whose worlds — and the loss they're carrying — feel poorly understood in standard clinical settings

Return, transition, and the long view

Return-to-work, return-to-performance, and return-to-life decision frameworks
Career termination, forced retirement, and the clinical work of identity reinvention
Coordinating care across the systems around the client — medical teams, family, employers, coaches, rehab providers
Knowing when to refer, when to consult, and when to recognize you are already the right clinician

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Case Managers
Addiction Counselors
Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Psych Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 10/09/2026

Brainspotting for Expanded Performance

Brainspotting offers a trauma‑informed, neuro‑experiential approach to performance enhancement by working with processes outside conscious awareness. When athletes and performers feel blocked under pressure, the issue is often not skill or mindset—but unresolved nervous system activation often from developmental trauma, injury, or other factors related to their high-performance pursuits. This session explores how Brainspotting can be used ethically and effectively to reduce performance‑limiting reactivity and help clients access greater consistency, presence, and flexibility when it matters most. Explore…

Key brainspotting techniques that help identify trauma and mental blocks
A live demonstration processing trauma from a sports injury
Enhancing your understanding of the body’s processes related to traumatic events

Walk away with elevated training in using Brainspotting techniques for expanded performance with your clients.

Program Information

Objectives

Explain expanded performance as it relates to brainspotting.
Observe a brainspotting demonstration on traumatic injury from performance sport.
Appraise brainspotting as an intervention for clients involved in high-performance pursuits.

Outline

How Brainspotting Expands Performance

Performance breakdowns beyond skill and mindset
Nervous system reactivity under pressure
Developmental trauma, injury, chronic high‑demand activation
Brainspotting principles applied to performance:
- Bottom‑up processing
- Implicit memory access
- Neuro‑experiential awareness
- Consistency, presence, flexibility—not “optimization”
- Risks, limitations and ethical considerations

Clinical Application: Identifying Performance‑Limiting Activation

Performance blocks as nervous system adaptations
Somatic cues during imagery and recall
Locating brainspots related to pressure, fear, or shutdown
Injury‑related trauma and fear of re‑injury
Expansion vs containment in performance work
Attunement, pacing, and nervous system safety
Therapist stance with athletes and performers

Demonstration: Brainspotting a Sports‑Related Performance Block

Live demonstration: trauma linked to sports injury
Establishing safety and dual attunement
Identifying and holding a performance‑relevant brainspot
Tracking bodily, emotional, and neurological shifts
Observing regulation, integration, and flexibility
Clinical takeaways for transfer to practice

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Physicians
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals
Physical Therapists
Physical Therapist Assistants
Occupational Therapists
Occupational Therapy Assistants
Exercise Physiologists
Athletic Trainers

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) In Performance Psychology

Join Dr. Carly Hunt, sport & health psychologist, author of Train Your Brain to Beat Chronic Pain: How to Harness the Power of the Mind-Body Connection, and former Division 1 Golfer who’s played in USGA and NCAA championships. An accomplished speaker, Dr. Hunt’s expertise has been trusted by top performers and organizations around the world including professional golfers, D1 university athletic programs, the United States Naval Academy and the John Hopkins School of Medicine.

Walk away from this session with step-by-step instructions on how to:

Apply skills from ACT from a performance psychology perspective
Help clients meet their goals through value-driven actions
Build a toolkit to help clients manage unhelpful thoughts

And much more …This program will expand your skillset and give you a way to add new high-demand services to your practice.

Program Information

Objectives

Define ACT processes and distinguish ACT from CBT in performance psychology contexts.
Apply values clarification and committed action strategies to help clients guide their own actions.
Practice and teach mindful practices from ACT to high performers.
Explore willingness, defusion, and self-as-context interventions to support psychological flexibility in performers.

Outline

Setting the Stage for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in Performance Psychology

Explore the what and why of ACT: How it differs from Cognitive Behavioral Approaches and why it works
Define ACT Processes including values clarity, willingness, defusion, present-moment contact, self-as context and psychological flexibility
Case example: ACT for intrusive thoughts and performance anxiety

Values, Goals, and Committed Action for High Performance

Clarify clients’ values in athletic contexts as a compass to guide their actions
Develop a values-based action plan for competition with clients
Teach acting with confidence
Guided Practice & Demonstration: Values identification and visualization for performers

Mindfulness as a Path to Enhanced Performance

Practice and build a mindful practices toolkit you can teach to clients
Explore the difference between present-moment focus and cognitive fusion
Guided Practices: Mindful practices for performers

Build a Toolkit to Manage Unhelpful Thoughts

Explore willingness with clients using relatable metaphors
Build a toolkit to help clients manage unhelpful thoughts using defusion techniques
Help clients manage pressure by building a non-perfomer identity through self-as-context
Guided Practices & Demonstrations: Willingness, Defusion, and Self-as-Context exercises

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Physicians
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals
Physical Therapists
Physical Therapist Assistants
Occupational Therapists
Occupational Therapy Assistants
Exercise Physiologists
Athletic Trainers