Why Standard Methods Fail

Many people are helped by therapy and coaching. For the right problems, they work.

Parallax isn’t a replacement for those approaches. It’s a response to their limits

Coaching

Coaching is built for performance, not transformation. It optimizes behavior while leaving the system generating that behavior intact.

It adds tools and strategies to over-rehearsed patterns, assuming the problem is execution not structure. For disciplined, intelligent people, that assumption fails.

If optimization were enough, you wouldn’t be here.

Therapy

Many therapists enter the field because they value being supportive and reassuring. For some people, this does help, though for many it ultimately falls short. 

Real bottom-up change requires discomfort and having our defenses challenged, not being protected from them by a therapist.

Too many therapists are unwilling—or unable—to generate the sort of discomfort their clients require to change and the work stalls.

Parallax | The story

I developed the Parallax method in high-stakes settings: inpatient psychiatric units and Veterans Affairs hospitals. My focus was PTSD rooted in combat and severe trauma—cases where standard therapy often fell flat.

In those environments, time was limited. So I abandoned passive listening and experimented with being more direct and active. I figured out how to bypass defenses, establish trust quickly, and use discomfort deliberately to drive bottom-up change.

After thirteen years at the VA, I left to work exclusively with other therapists—many of them frustrated with the limits of their own field.

Later, at the urging of a few executive clients, I founded Parallax to bring my approach to leaders in business and entrepreneurship.

Functional Psychotherapy:
The real “anti-therapy”

First, let’s be honest: “anti-therapy” is nothing more than clever branding.

What I actually practice is Functional Psychotherapy, an integrative, depth-oriented model of change that I have developed over two decades of clinical work.

For a concrete example of Functional Psychotherapy in action, see my most recent peer-reviewed publication.

How it works

In Functional Psychotherapy, the goal is simple: identify what drives your problem, disrupt the avoidance maintaining it, and then change the systems that produce it.

  • We always are part of our own problem. So, we begin by helping you see that and getting you out of your own way—or else nothing changes.

  • Insight is necessary and insufficient. Lasting change is bottom-up and experiential. We aim to catch you off-guard so new perspectives are discovered rather than argued into place. That shift is the essence of Parallax, and the origin of its name.

  • Memory reconsolidation guides us: We create “mismatch experiences”—moments when expectation collides with reality—which force the underlying system to update.

  • High performers tend to live in their heads. This work reconnects intellect and experiencing, moving from understanding the problem to feeling the difference.

  • I work responsively, moment to moment. Problems differ at their roots, so methods must vary. I draw from multiple theories without allegiance to any single one.

A final note

Parallax is a cash-only practice for a select group of executives and other high performers who have tried everything else and hit a wall.

I started Parallax after a few of my CEO clients encouraged me to, because I was the only one who made a difference for them when nothing else did.

I charge a premium fee because it is necessary with high earners. Doing meaningful work requires having skin in the game. Without real investment, the work risks not mattering.

If you’re looking for something different, reach out. I’ll be in touch.

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