John "JD" Mata M.S., M.Ed., CSCS

If you’ve spent years pushing through, adapting, and “just handling it,” your body and mind have done exactly what they were supposed to do to keep you going. For many neurodivergent and high-performing people, those same strategies eventually start to work against you showing up as burnout, injuries, emotional shutdown, or feeling like you’re stuck in one gear. My work sits at the intersection of counseling, coaching, and performance. I help you understand what you’ve been training physically, mentally, and emotionally, and then we build new patterns that fit the life you actually want now, without asking you to become more “normal” or less yourself. As a late-diagnosed neurodivergent with a long track record in high-performance environments, I understand what it’s like to have your strengths and struggles tightly linked. My background in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Exercise Physiology, collegiate and professional strength and conditioning, and two decades of research with elite sport and special operations communities gives us a deep toolkit, but we always start with your lived experience. Who I Work with: I work with people who live or have lived in high-pressure environments: neurodivergent adults, children, or teens, parents, athletes, military and special operations communities, first responders, and high-performing professionals who feel like they can “push through anything” until they suddenly can’t. Many of my clients are navigating burnout, chronic stress, physical or spiritual injuries, transition out of structured systems into a new phase of life, or the quiet sense that their life on paper doesn’t match how it feels from the inside. Especially when their brain has never really fit the “standard” mold. What Informs my Approach: My work is grounded in evidence-based frameworks like Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), combined with performance psychology and exercise physiology, applied in a way that first accounts for your unique characteristics, talents, skills, and abilities. I also bring 10 years of military experience, including multiple deployments as a team leader, and 10 more years helping support the performance of military personnel, so I understand the culture, tempo, and costs of staying switched on for too long. That background informs how I show up with you: direct, grounded, and respectful of the realities you’re navigating. In practice, that looks like using cognitive tools to examine your beliefs and self-talk, while also changing how you train, recover, sleep, breathe, and move so your nervous system, body, and behavior are all pointed at the same goals, in a way that works with your wiring instead of against it. If you’re ready to retrain, not erase, how your body and mind work, let’s start that process together. (Supervised by Vanessa Bernal, LMFT-S, LPC-S)