About & mission

Becoming the ally I once needed.

For more than twenty years I worked in demanding rooms before I sat in this one. That experience is not a detour from my clinical work. It is the reason I can hear what high-functioning people are actually telling me.

Ioanna Stanegloudi, mental health counselor

If you have built a career, a company, a family or a reputation, you know that competence has a private side. You recover fast because you have to. You decide without certainty. You hold things together, and you rarely say how much that costs.

For almost twenty years my work was finance: corporate finance, credit risk, banking and management consulting, on M&A, valuation, restructuring and non-performing loan portfolios across banking, real estate, construction, hospitality, pharmaceuticals, energy and technology. Then, for eight years, I was an entrepreneur. I co-founded a regulated financial analytics platform, led teams, raised capital, built risk models, and eventually exited the business.

My entrepreneurial career shaped me even more profoundly. I had to learn to thrive in uncertainty and to carry myself through disappointment. My recovery had to be fast, and I had to keep making decisions even with no obvious right answer. I walked through extraordinary opportunities and wins, and there were also loneliness, self-doubt, and a constant pressure to keep pushing no matter what.

It was through hardship that I began to look at success differently.

I started to get increasingly interested in how people function under pressure, how they can handle themselves better, and how the pressure changes them. I began noticing the interactions between anxiety and ambition, perfectionism, identity changes and other major life transitions, close relationships and other supports, and of course loss and failure. I could see people with huge potential getting sucked into the quicksand of burnout.

I remember mentoring colleagues, founders and teams through growth, pressure and difficult decisions, and always noticing behavioral or cognitive patterns that called for clinical expertise rather than good advice. My curiosity led me back to university, where I completed my Master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

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 so old to consider it a weakness.

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.

Careers are not linear, and progress requires self-awareness. Our experiences are the dots that, when connected, can point us towards our next step. Mine point here: to helping people who are carrying pressure, ambition, responsibility, loss or major change find more clarity, resilience, connection and meaning.

Ioanna is pronounced ee-oh-ah-nah. I work in English and Greek.

Who I help

People who are managing a great deal, and would like to stop doing it alone.

I work with adults, teens and couples in New York. Most 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.

High-performing adults

Founders · executives · lawyers · clinicians · finance · consulting · tech · academia

You are effective and you are depleted. The anxiety that once sharpened you, now is affecting your sleep, or the satisfaction you get out of life. You are managing a team, a deal, a department, a diagnosis, and quietly wondering how long you can keep this particular version of yourself running.

What you often need is not more advice. It is a place where the whole picture can be put on the table, including the parts that would be inconvenient at work, and rearranged strategically, based on your values, resources, wants and needs.

Couples under pressure

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 are having the same argument on a loop, and both of you are certain you are the one being reasonable.

I follow a structured evidence-based protocol that lasts, typically, between ten and twelve sessions. When both partners engage openly, practice between sessions, and stay committed to the process, couples often begin to see meaningful changes in the way they communicate, connect, and navigate challenges together.

Individuals & couples building a family

Infertility · IVF · perinatal loss · stillbirth · SIDS · postpartum anxiety & depression

Family-building can become a long stretch of hope, procedure, grief and waiting that most of your life is not built to accommodate. People around you may not know what to say, or may say the wrong thing confidently.

This work runs through both individual therapy and couples therapy, depending on who is carrying it and how you want to be seen.

High-achieving teens

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.

Greek-speaking clients

Θεραπεία στα ελληνικά

I can work in English and Greek. I am familiar with the peculiarities of the Greek culture, and I know about the weight of building a balanced life between two countries. Family, expectations, distance, obligation, and the question of where home is now.

Honest fit

When I am not the right person.

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.

Curious whether this is the right fit?

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