Brittany Sterling, Ph.D. (she/her)

Brittany Sterling, PhD, is a Harvard-trained psychologist who works with people who hold themselves to high standards but often feel as though they are falling short of their own expectations or others’. That pressure can persist even alongside a strong track record of success, showing up as anxiety, self-doubt, or a sense of never quite doing enough.

The clients she works with are often accustomed to being the person others rely on. They may be responsible, accommodating, or especially attuned to what others need, while finding it harder to make room for their own needs. Over time, this can contribute to anxiety, people-pleasing, difficulty setting limits, or burnout. For the professionals and parents she works with, this often means understanding why these patterns have been so hard to shift and finding different ways of responding at work, in relationships, and at home.

Dr. Sterling brings a sharp, curious mind to her work, along with warmth, humor, and a style that feels engaged rather than formulaic. She is grounded in psychodynamic therapy and CBT but does not approach therapy from a fixed script. Instead, she draws from her extensive training, adapting her approach to the person in front of her and what they need from therapy. She is often able to see a problem from an angle that others may have missed while keeping the work practical and clinically grounded.

A significant part of her practice involves helping adults make sense of ADHD or another form of neurodivergence recognized later in life, including longstanding struggles with attention, overwhelm, relationships, or self-expectations. She also works regularly with OCD, anxiety, and burnout that may be largely invisible to the people around them. Her work also extends to clients recovering from painful or emotionally harmful relationships and to parents who want to approach their own children differently than they were parented.

A particular strength of her work is its breadth without sacrificing depth. She connects well with people across different ages, backgrounds, identities, and life circumstances, while paying close attention to how each person thinks, communicates, and experiences the world. Curiosity, ambition, and a desire to understand oneself more fully are common threads among the people drawn to her work. She works with both women and men, with a growing number of men seeking her out. She also brings particular knowledge and an affirming approach to her work with queer and neurodivergent clients.

More recently, she has pursued additional training in the relationship between nutrition and mental health. She takes a broad view of the factors that affect emotional well-being and, when helpful and with a client’s permission, collaborates with primary care physicians and medication prescribers. She is particularly well suited to clients who want to look closely at sleep, nutrition, routines, and other aspects of daily life before deciding whether medication is right for them, or as part of a broader approach when medication is already in place.

She also offers focused ADHD diagnostic consultations for adults who have long wondered whether ADHD may be part of their experience, including people whose academic or professional success may have made the diagnosis less obvious earlier in life.