About Me

People sometimes ask me how I ended up teaching stress management, and the funny thing is, it was never the plan.

If you'd asked me years ago what I wanted to do, I would have told you I worked in tech. That's still true. I've spent almost 30 years in the corporate world, and I genuinely enjoy it. I like solving problems, building products, and figuring out how things work. Along the way, I also became a yoga teacher because I loved helping people in a completely different way. For a long time, those felt like two separate parts of my life.

During the week, I was juggling deadlines, meetings, competing priorities, and everything else that comes with a busy career. Then I'd step into a yoga class where everyone wanted to know how to feel less stressed. I could help people relax for an hour, but I started noticing something. They'd leave class feeling great... and then walk right back into the same lives that had them overwhelmed in the first place, and immediately the cycle would repeat.

At the same time, I wasn't exactly immune to stress myself. Like most ambitious people, I was good at getting things done. If something needed to happen, I'd figure it out. But underneath that was this constant feeling that I was always responding to the next thing. Another email. Another deadline. Another problem to solve. I wasn't falling apart, but I also wasn't operating the way I wanted to.

What really surprised me was how many people around me were having the exact same experience. Smart people. Successful people. People who looked like they had everything under control. We were all trying different versions of the same advice: get more organized, manage your time better, meditate, take a vacation, exercise more. Those things helped, but none of them lasted - why?

That question ended up sending me down a rabbit hole.

I started reading everything I could about psychology, neuroscience, behavior change, mindfulness, movement, and how the nervous system works. I wasn't planning to build a business around it—I was just fascinated. The more I learned, the more I realized stress wasn't nearly as simple as I'd always assumed.

What clicked for me was that stress isn't just about what's happening around us. It's about how our brain and body are interpreting what's happening around us. Two people can walk into the exact same meeting and have completely different experiences because their nervous systems are responding differently. Once I understood that, stress stopped feeling like this unpredictable force I had to fight. A constant that would always just be there. It became something I could actually change.....so I set about learning how.

What I found was more complex than I ever imagined, yet also so simple - and it changed the way I approached just about everything.

It changed how I handled difficult conversations at work. It changed how I reacted when plans fell apart. It changed how I thought about productivity, burnout, rest, and even success itself. I wasn't looking for ways to escape stress anymore. I was starting to use the stress to my advantage. To turn it from enemy to my secret weapon.

Eventually, I realized I wasn't the only person who needed this.

There are plenty of resources that tell ambitious people to slow down, simplify their lives, or lower their expectations. There are just as many that tell us to optimize every minute of the day and squeeze even more out of ourselves. I never felt like either approach matched real life.

Most of us are just trying to do meaningful work, take care of the people we love, build a career we're proud of, and still have enough left over to enjoy our lives. I don't think that's an unreasonable goal. But since so many of us were never taught how stress actually works, we keep thinking something is wrong with us when the old strategies don't work. That we can't have it all and still feel amazing.

That's why I created Stressed & Obsessed.

Everything I teach is built around one idea: you don't have to become a different person to handle stress differently. You don't have to give up your ambition, move to a cabin in the woods, or spend two hours every morning on the perfect wellness routine. You just need to understand what's happening inside your own mind and body well enough to make a different choice when it matters.

I'm still working in tech. I still have deadlines. I still have days where life throws me a curveball. I still get stressed. The difference is that stress no longer feels like it's in the driver's seat. That's what I am offering here. A mix of knowledge and micro changes you can make on a daily basis to take control back in your own life.

If any of this resonated with you, I'm glad you're here. I hope what you learn here helps you stop fighting your stress and start understanding it, because time and time again, I have sen that's where real change begins.