About & mission
I'm a therapist, a former entrepreneur, and someone who has spent much of my life trying to understand what helps people get through difficult moments, grow, and find their way through change.
Ioanna is pronounced ee-oh-ah-nah. I work in English and Greek.
My path here wasn't a straight one. For more than twenty years, I worked in finance, consulting and entrepreneurship. I know what it feels like to carry responsibility, make difficult decisions, live with uncertainty, and keep going even when you're not entirely sure of yourself. I've known the excitement of building something meaningful, and also the self-doubt, loneliness and exhaustion that can sit behind outward success.
Over time, I became more and more curious about the person behind the professional role. What happens when the pressure becomes too much? Why do we struggle to ask for help? How do our experiences shape the way we see ourselves and others?
Those questions brought me to counseling. I often describe this change as becoming the ally I once needed, and that's the spirit I hope to bring to our work together.
I decided to become the ally I needed during my own challenging and demanding times. High achievers can also feel vulnerable. Getting support for our mental health is as important as looking after our physical health, and it is long past time we stopped seeing it as a weakness.
I believe that feeling understood can make it easier to explore things we've been carrying for a long time. I'm naturally curious about people and their stories. I like asking questions, understanding different perspectives, and finding the connections between experiences that may at first seem unrelated.
Trauma and disturbing experiences have touched almost all of us in some way. There are ways, such as EMDR, to reduce that distress and move forward toward a more meaningful life.
Clinically, my work is grounded in empathy, genuineness and unconditional positive regard. I have created a space where you can feel respected, understood and not judged, and where we can be honest about what is not working. I see myself as your ally and guide. My focus is to help you understand what is getting in the way, reconnect with what matters, and move toward a life that feels more connected, meaningful, and chosen.
My clinical experience includes anxiety, depression, trauma, burnout, grief, relationship stress, and serious mental illness. Working with serious mental illness, in particular, deepened my respect for careful assessment, clinical structure, risk awareness, and collaborative care.
Who I help
I work with adults, teens and couples in New York. Many of the people I see are capable, thoughtful, used to being the ones who cope, and are now carrying something that competence cannot solve.
In short
I work with high-performing adults and teens experiencing anxiety, depression, trauma/PTSD, burnout, perfectionism, career pressure, life transitions, grief, and relationship stress; with couples under career, caregiving or family-building pressure; and with individuals and couples facing infertility, perinatal loss, postpartum anxiety or postpartum depression.
Founders · executives · lawyers · clinicians · finance · consulting · tech · academia
You are effective and you are depleted. What you often need is not more advice, but a place where the whole picture can be put on the table, including the parts that would be inconvenient at work.
Two demanding careers · new parenthood · fertility treatment · relocation · caregiving
You may not be in crisis at all. You have become logistics partners who used to be something else, or you keep having the same argument. This is the work of couples therapy.
Infertility · IVF · perinatal loss · stillbirth · SIDS · postpartum anxiety & depression
When the journey to becoming a parent isn't what you imagined, it can be hard to know where to put all the feelings that come with it. Hope, disappointment, grief, fear and even guilt can exist side by side. You don't have to make sense of them on your own.
This work runs through both individual therapy and couples therapy, depending on who is carrying it.
Academic pressure · perfectionism · anxiety · identity · family expectations
Teenagers who are doing everything right can be the last ones anyone worries about. I work with adolescents carrying heavy academic and family expectations, and with parents who want to help without adding to the load.
Θεραπεία στα ελληνικά
I can work in English and Greek. I know the weight of building a life between two countries: family, expectations, distance, obligation, and the question of where home is now.
Honest fit
If you need urgent or emergency care, a higher level of care such as inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment, medication management, or court-ordered evaluation and documentation, I am not the right fit, and I will say so early rather than late.
If what you want is performance coaching or business advice, that is also not what happens here. This is psychotherapy, which is slower, more honest, and concerned with your whole life rather than your output.