Stress and Wellness - Your Favorite Frenemies

Johnny Pierce is currently a licensed clinical psychologist with Insight Into Action Therapy’s private practice team. He also provides telehealth therapy services part-time through Octave. He has nearly two decades of clinical experience working with individuals, couples, families, and therapeutic groups. His focus has been wellness over the last eight years. He assists clients with identifying the goals behind their behaviors as well as their larger personal goals. When conflict arises between goals and behaviors, wellness directs clients to resolution. In the process clients come to appreciate their emotions as information about their relationship with the world around them and properly take them into consideration rather than allowing them to guide decision making. As clients become more understanding of themselves they find they are more open to understanding others. His successful clients typically spend a year or two in services before leaving confident that they can tackle life as it comes rather than needing ideal situations.

In addition to his clinical work with clients, Johnny has also been a public speaker, president of the board for a non-profit, clinical supervisor, and podcaster. He has written and produced psychoeducational media as well.

In 2008, Johnny began his doctorate program at the Adler School of Professional Psychology (now known as Adler University) in Chicago. Over the course of the program he completed practica that allowed him to build his clinical skills under the guidance of experienced licensed psychologists. He worked with his first therapy client in 2009 and confirmed his clinical path and passion. In 2011 he secured a Master’s in Counseling Psychology. To complete his doctorate he moved to central Pennsylvania for his internship with Pennsylvania Counseling Services (PCS). The internship allowed him to practice in two very different settings, an outpatient clinic and an inpatient facility. At the outpatient clinic he typically saw clients with mood disorders, relational challenges, and acute mental health events. Within the inpatient space his clients had histories of criminality, substance use disorders, and some personality disorders. At the close of the internship experience Johnny graduated as a Doctor of Psychology in Clinical Psychology (Psy.D.) in 2014. He spent the next eight years with PCS across two outpatient clinics and various roles. The experiences birthed a greater ocus on wellness that has become his platform. In 2019 he became a licensed clinical psychologist and finished his time with PCS in 2022 by coming full circle as a supervisor to doctorate level interns. In the fall of 2021 Johnny was fortunate to be welcomed onto the Insight Into Action Therapy private practice in Northern Virginia. He has enjoyed his near five years with the team, aiding clients on their path to wellness. He recently added his work with Octave and his personal podcast The Actually Well podcast to further his clinical reach.