We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michael Jacobs, PhD. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michael below.
Michael, appreciate you joining us today. We’re complete cheeseballs and so we love asking folks to share the most heartwarming moment from their career – do you have a touching moment you can share with us?
One of the many rewarding experiences I had during training involved a client who was struggling with performance anxiety at work. He worked in a corporate environment, and despite admittedly being a skilled presenter, his anxiety had progressed to the point where he ran out of the room during a presentation. Not every client arrives to therapy motivated to do the work, but he had a very specific goal in mind. He was up for a promotion based on receiving a new certification. The certification test culminated in a presentation and was only offered every other year. If he succeeded, he would be the youngest person in his company’s history to receive this certification.
While I was already aware that evidence-based techniques like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are considered to be the gold standard treatment for anxiety, I was still heartened and surprised as I worked with my client. I helped him engage in exposure exercises in order to become accustomed to the physical sensations of anxiety. I taught him to reframe unhelpful thoughts about what might happen if he experienced anxiety during a presentation. We collaborated to design mock presentations where he would practice presenting while experiencing anxiety without engaging in unhelpful avoidance behaviors. He was willing, motivated, receptive and brave as he engaged in the process despite many moments of discomfort. It felt like magic, even though I knew this was science!
At the end of the roughly three months we worked together, he completed the work evaluation by presenting. In his estimation, it had gone well, but he wouldn’t know the results for several months. We had one final session where he thanked me and we spoke about techniques he could use to maintain his newfound freedom while presenting. I was, of course, curious as to how things turned out for him, but it wasn’t my place to reach out.
About six months after our last session I received an email from him excitedly telling me that he was now the youngest person in company history to receive certification. He had indeed passed, and he attributed his success to our work together. I was beyond thrilled. This hadn’t required years of therapy, either. He had reached his goals in a matter of months! While his experience may not be typical–he was highly motivated, had an uncomplicated case, and was on a time crunch–this was great evidence for me that the work I was doing could truly help other people. I wasn’t just there to be a sounding board or to give advice (although I can do those things, too!). I was using scientifically proven techniques that led to real meaningful changes in people’s lives.
Michael, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I took a somewhat nontraditional route to becoming a psychologist. I completed undergrad with a BFA in Musical Theater and went on to pursue a career as a musical theater performer. I performed professionally in NYC, around the US and internationally. A couple of years into my performance career, I opened my own private vocal studio where I began working with other professional performers in the NYC area. As I continued my career as both performer and teacher, I began to notice how much the mental health of my students was impacting their lives and careers. Even prior to my training as a psychologist, I found that a large portion of my sessions with voice students was devoted to the psychological and emotional aspects of their lives and voices. Anxiety was as likely a culprit for singing issues as poor singing technique.
In parallel to this, one of my “survival jobs” was roleplaying as a cancer patient for medical professionals who were developing their communication skills. It was there that I met my future mentor, Dr. Yulia Landa, who recruited me to roleplay as a patient with psychotic symptoms for her upcoming treatment study. I was hired along with three other actors, and we were trained in a form of the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis (CBTp) treatment being developed for the study. At the time I was confused by Dr. Landa’s requests for my feedback and opinions on future trainings. Eventually, she and I began traveling the country to train clinicians in CBTp and the Group and Family-Based CBT model for the prevention of psychosis (GFCBT) that we had been developing and studying. To this day, we continue to provide these trainings through our lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. After one such training, she confided in me that I likely understood the model better than most of the clinicians (psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, etc.) that we were training. This completely rocked my world and set me on the path to becoming a psychologist. I began taking the supplementary classes I needed to apply to PhD programs.
When I began my training at Hofstra University, I experienced some turmoil as I navigated two passions: performing arts and psychology. Initially, I believed I would need to give up the performing arts part of my world in order to make room for the psychologist within. I later came to find that not only was it possible to have both, but my experience made me perhaps uniquely qualified to integrate them. I used my thesis and dissertation projects as opportunities to develop an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) treatment for audition and performance anxiety in musical theater performers. There had been little to no other research on anxiety brought on by the audition process exclusively when it comes to musical theater performers. I was pleased by the treatment results and continue to use it today as a part of my practice.
As one of the only psychologists with a professional performing arts background, I knew I needed to devote a portion of my practice to working with performing artists. When I created the Performance Institute for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, I envisioned a center where I could use evidence-based psychotherapy methods (those that are scientifically studied to show their effectiveness) such as CBT and ACT to help those in need. While we work with adult and adolescent clients experiencing a range of mental health concerns, a special segment of our practice is devoted solely to working with the performing arts community. In particular, our practice specializes in anxiety disorders (Generalized Anxiety, Social Anxiety, Performance Anxiety, Audition Anxiety, Panic Attacks, etc.), OCD, depression, adult ADHD, LGBTQ+ issues, insomnia, clinical perfectionism, and stress management. In addition to offering individual therapy to those in the NYC metro area we call home (NY, NJ and CT), we offer telehealth services throughout the country (currently in 35 states).
Another passion of mine is offering training, workshops and group therapy to performing artists, performing arts programs and performing arts instructors. We regularly offer group treatment for musical theater performers coping with performance and audition anxiety. This 8-week program is based on a model proven effective for the treatment of anxiety disorders and makes therapy more affordable and accessible to the itinerant artist. In addition to offering workshops for students at college performing arts programs, I developed training for performing arts instructors. The Mental Health Aware training provides performing arts instructors with the tools they need to better identify, understand, and train students with mental health concerns.
My ability to connect with others in an honest, authentic, responsive (and sometimes humorous) way allows me to provide a safe environment in which clients have the opportunity to grow. While I am supportive and empathic, I’m not afraid to be honest with my clients. Much of the work I do with my clients is focused on providing them with learning tools and skills to better cope in the future (rather than on rehashing the past or merely venting). While everyone needs to vent at times, and knowing about someone’s history is an important part of therapy, it is not strictly necessary to resolve all childhood events in order to live fully in the present. My skills-based approach allows clients to start overcoming their barriers to living more quickly so that they can reach their goals sooner.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
Authenticity and empathy are probably the most important qualities for succeeding as a psychologist. They are both key in making clients feel safe, understood, heard and connected to their therapist. I have been training other clinicians for more than a decade now, and these qualities come up time and time again. As I mentioned earlier, our group at Mount Sinai Medical School developed a Group and Family-Based CBT treatment model. Due to the success of that model, we have been training clinicians around the world. As we refined our training model, we began to notice that while some people did well in our training, others continued to struggle. We came to realize that those who came into training showing more empathy and authenticity as therapists tended to do better overall.
While we were able to train clinicians to understand the concepts of our model, those who presented with a less understanding and authentic demeanor struggled with the application. We have devised ways to develop these qualities in clinicians, but we have often found that we prefer to work with less experienced clinicians who are empathic and authentic than highly experienced clinicians lacking these traits.
Personally, if I’m ever struggling to connect with a client, I always go back to empathy and authenticity. I ask myself if I have sufficiently related to (and validated) how they feel and if I’ve been ‘real’ and expressed humanity in my responses. People can smell inauthenticity from a mile away, and they don’t like it.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
As I mentioned earlier, I made a pretty big pivot when I decided to stop acting in order to go back to school to become a psychologist. While I was pretty academically-minded in high school, I (like many people) had never been a big fan of homework or studying. Additionally, I was already almost a decade out of undergrad when I decided to apply to PhD programs. Since my undergraduate degree was in musical theater, the first step for me was enrolling in post-baccalaureate psychology classes. Most PhD programs require a minimum of 18 undergraduate credits of psychology plus the psychology subject GRE and standard GRE. It was definitely not easy!
I would credit my success to my ability to hyperfocus when I am very passionate about something. I was a bit of an annoying overachiever in my psychology classes. I knew it was imperative to have good grades when applying to highly competitive PhD programs, and my desire to stay in the NYC metro area made my task even more challenging. I developed study skills for the psychology GRE and enrolled in a prep course for the standard GRE (it had been 12 years since my last math class!). My efforts were rewarded with good grades and scores. I received multiple interviews and offers from Clinical Psychology PhD programs, which I was told is not the norm. Not bad for a musical theater major!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://PerformanceCBT.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/performanceCBT/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Performance-Institute-for-Cognitive-and-Behavioral-Therapies/100087381810976/
- Other: https://www.performancecbt.com/blog
Image Credits
JMA Photography