Calvin Fitch (he/him)

Depression often places a negative lens over all aspects of life and leads people to ruminate in a negative way. My approach is to take a compassionate and mindful view of negative thoughts and use cognitive-behavioral techniques to help them challenge negative thinking. Simultaneously, I often work on re-aligning clients with their values so that they are living a life that is meaningful to them. These strategies help people to clear the often cloudy lens through which they evaluate themselves.

Anxiety generally takes people out of the present and puts them in the future and also tricks them into thinking that worrying provides some sort of control. Worrying, however, is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but you don't actually go anywhere. I use cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness-based techniques to help people anchor themselves into the present and let go of worry to provide a bit more real estate in their heads to focus on living their lives.

Social interactions and performance situations can feel like landmines for disaster. The social anxiety "monster" tells you everything that is wrong with you and ruins your confidence. I can help you to feel more empowered in these situations. I help people to take the weight out of the anxiety by using research-supported strategies to enable them to dismantle negative internalized beliefs.

I have trained in ACT throughout my graduate and post-doctoral career. Often times, mental health concerns can drag us so far away from our values and the people that we want to be. ACT strategies are great at promoting mindfulness around our values and promoting behavior change activities to bring us back in line with our values.

Much of my training was in my PhD and beyond has been in CBT. Our thoughts really have a powerful influence on our behaviors and feelings; however, many times we accept our thoughts as they are without question. Using socratic strategies, I often find that clients can uncover deeper themes in their patterns of thinking and nonjudgmental awareness of these themes translates into enormous power in terms of self-awareness.

I trained in DBT in the DBT clinic at Mass General Hospital, one of the top psychiatry programs in the country. I find that DBT is very good at capturing the complexities of life through its foundation in Hegelian dialectics. Hegelian dialectics refer to the idea that two seemingly opposing things can both be true (e.g., I can love someone and also know that they are a toxic force in my life, or I can be so pissed off with someone and still choose to treat them with compassion).