Neal Palles LCSW - MA Applied Sport Psychology

Psychotherapy | Mental Performance Coaching

My mission is to help you take action, so you can close the gap between what matters most to you and what you're currently doing.

Thanks for dropping in.

I’m Neal.

I am a licensed psychotherapist and mental performance coach with dual degrees in clinical social work and applied sport psychology and provide psychotherapy and/or mental performance coaching to athletes 17+

Psychotherapy or Mental Performance Coaching - What's the Difference?

  • If you're entire life or lots of it is affected by what your mind is doing, how you're feeling and what's going on around you then psychotherapy would be the direction to go. For example, here are some things a lot of my clients come to me for:

    • They're feeling depressed, anxious and sad after an injury.

    • They’re striving for perfection and keep getting frustrated because it feels the’re not making progress.

    • They've found themselves having difficulty making day to day decisions because they're so distracted or thinking too much about the consequences of that decision.

    • They feel anxious about a lot of things going on in life and even a little edgy and panicky at times.

    • They have had a drop in performance and it's taking up space in their mind, so much so, that they can't focus well or get things done

    • They're feeling burnt out and tired from sport, school, work or life and it's difficult to juggle it all.

    • They're beating themselves up due to a bad performance and taking it home.

    • They're feeling anxious about the political climate or climate change or lots of stuff outside of their control.

  • If it's specific to sport and performance and your goal is to enhance and or elevate performance or overcome a specific block to performance. Then it's likely Mental Performance Coaching.  Here are some common things that athletes come to me for mental performance coaching:

    • They've experienced anxiety before a race or at the starting line.

    • They want to develop a bit more resilience, mental toughness or grit to get to the finish faster or overcome a block to performance

    • They lose focus on their goals in the middle of a race and 'settle for less.'

    • They want to get clear on their goals but don’t know where to start

    • They perform really well in practice, but their performance drops off dramatically when it's go time

    • They’re a coach and want their team to enhance their mental skills like working on self-talk, or just build team culture and cohesion.

I'm here to help you get through the things that are holding you back whether that be in performance or in LIFE. It’s not going to be easy. You're likely going to have to get vulnerable and uncomfortable. If it was easy though you would have done it already and wouldn’t be here. There are no magic tricks. Change takes time. But if we jump in together and you’re curious, I can help you get there.