Sports Therapist | Relational Therapy for High Intensity Adults in Los Feliz, CA
You’re an optimizer. It’s your greatest strength. And right now it’s the thing that’s costing you the most.
Sports therapy for athletes and high intensity adults in Los Angeles and across California — working on the relationships that performance can’t fix.
You’re an optimizer. Prepared, consistent, disciplined — the world rewarded every bit of it. Until it stopped being something you used and became something you are.
You didn’t lose your edge. You just can’t feel it anymore. That’s different.
You may start to notice in yourself :
∙ Your system is running — but you’re not sure you’re running it anymore.
∙ Your drive and motivation feel unreliable — and that scares you more than anything.
∙ You’re exhausted but slowing down feels dangerous.
∙ You’re irritable where you used to be focused.
∙ You feel lost in the spaces where you used to feel most alive.
∙ You can’t remember the last time you felt genuinely like yourself.
You may start to notice in your performance :
∙ Your optimization is maxed out — but the returns are diminishing.
∙ You’re putting in the work but the results aren’t matching the effort.
∙ The focus that used to come automatically requires everything you have now.
∙ You’re scared of what happens if you slow down.
∙ You don’t know who you are without the edge.
∙ Performance used to feel like home. Lately it’s just another place you’re pretending.
The people who love you most are getting what’s left over. And you know it.
You may notice in your relationships:
∙ Optimization doesn’t work on people. And that’s the problem.
∙ You’re in the room but not really there.
∙ The people closest to you are getting the version of you that’s running on empty.
∙ You’re either pushing people away or holding on too tight — and you’re not sure which is worse.
∙ The irritability that used to be focus has nowhere productive to go.
∙ You feel completely alone in a life that looks full from the outside.
This is for the optimizer
The athlete. The gym devotee. The high achiever. The person who has always solved problems by working harder — and is starting to realize that this particular problem doesn’t respond to that approach.
Optimizers carry a particular combination of FOMO and perfectionism. They want to be the best at everything, all the time. Missing out feels like falling behind. Good enough never feels like enough. The standard keeps moving because that’s what keeps the motor running.
Here’s what makes it complicated — the external results can be real. The praise can be genuine. The logic can confirm you’re doing enough. And still the discontentment persists. Not because you’re ungrateful or broken. But because the system was built to pursue — not to receive. Arrival was never part of the design.
This practice works with athletes, gym devotees, and high intensity adults across Los Angeles and California navigating disordered eating, compulsive exercise, OCD patterns, high functioning anxiety, relationship breakdown, and identity loss. People for whom discipline and dysfunction have looked identical for a long time.
If you’re ready to understand the system underneath — not just manage the symptoms — you’re in the right place.
When the motor won’t turn off…
It started as discipline. Structure. A way to get results in a world that rewarded exactly that.
And it worked. So you kept going. The world kept rewarding it. Your identity built itself around it — brick by brick, result by result, until it stopped being something you did and became something you are.
That’s not a character flaw. That’s what happens when an optimizer meets a culture that only knows how to celebrate optimization.
The question isn’t what’s wrong with you. The question is what happens when the thing that built you starts running on its own.
Sports Performance & Mental Health in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California
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Sports Performance & Mental Health in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California *
Hi, I’m Amelia — Sports Therapist | Relational Therapy for High Intensity Adults
I’m a licensed therapist and I spent over a decade as a personal trainer and studio owner in Los Angeles. I’ve been inside this culture. I’ve stood next to people in the best shape of their lives who could only see what wasn’t there yet. I watched discipline become ritual, ritual become compulsion, and compulsion get mistaken for dedication — by everyone around them, and by themselves.
I’m not a sports therapist who will nod politely while you explain your world. I already know it. I know what the optimizer’s motor feels like when it won’t turn off — and I know what it costs when that motor has nowhere healthy to go.
What makes my work different is the relational lens. I’m an MFT — a Marriage and Family Therapist — which means I don’t just look at symptoms. I look at systems. Your relationship to your body. Your relationship to food. Your relationship to your drive. Your relationship to the people who matter most to you. That’s where the real patterns live. And that’s where things actually change.
I call what I do Relationship Fitness — building the mental and emotional strength that makes you stronger in your body, in your relationships, and in your life. Not just performing okay. Actually okay.
Not here to dismantle what you’ve built. Just to soften the edges.
Services
Every optimizer finds their way here through a different door. The work underneath is the same — understanding the system, repairing the relationships it’s damaged, and building something that actually feels like you.
Disordered Eating & Exercise
For athletes and high intensity adults whose relationship with food and training has stopped working the way it used to. What started as structure and discipline has become the only thing holding it together. You don’t have to call it an eating disorder to know something is off.
OCD Informed Treatment
For optimizers whose minds won’t turn off. The checking, the rituals, the rules that feel impossible to break. For high intensity adults this often shows up inside food, training, and body — making it invisible to everyone around them including themselves.
Life Transitions & Identity
For optimizers navigating the moments that disrupt the system — injury, retirement, marriage, pregnancy, parenthood. When the structure that held everything together suddenly changes, the optimizer doesn’t just lose a routine. They lose themselves.
Couples Therapy
For partners navigating disconnection, conflict, and the pressure that builds when two people stop being able to reach each other. Relationship Fitness for couples who are ready to do the work.
All services available online across Los Angeles and California.
What Working Together Looks Like
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Getting Clear
We slow it down. Map the patterns. Identify where discipline crossed into compulsion.
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Getting Curious
We explore what the motor is protecting. Performance, identity, attachment, fear of irrelevance.
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Getting There
We rewire the patterns so performance becomes a choice again - not a survival strategy.
Why It’s Hard to Start
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The behaviors feel normal because everyone around you does the same thing. In athletic and high intensity culture discipline is always celebrated. That’s exactly what makes this so hard to see — and exactly why it keeps going.
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Your edge. Your results. Your identity. Your drive. We don’t dismantle here. We figure out what’s actually working and what’s quietly working against you. The motor stays on. We just get you back in the driver’s seat.
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Everything we do is completely confidential. Online sessions mean nobody sees you walking into a therapist’s office. And the fact that you’re still reading this means something in you already knows.
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Most therapists don’t understand this world from the inside. That’s not an excuse — it’s a real clinical barrier. This practice is built specifically for athletes and high intensity adults. I already speak your language.
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You’ve built something real. We go at your pace. The goal isn’t to tear it down — it’s to understand what’s underneath it so you can actually feel what you’ve built.
What People Are Saying
You’ve been running on this motor for a long time.
You know what it feels like when everything clicks. You know what it feels like when it doesn’t. And you know the difference between tired and lost.
You don’t have to keep figuring this out alone.
Start with a free 15-minute consultation — online, no pressure, just a real conversation with someone who already speaks your language.
My real goal for you?
Look in the mirror and think — you cute.