Auran Piatigorsky, PhD, LP, CMPC
Licensed Clinical Sport Psychologist
As a licensed clinical sport psychologist in the state of California (License PSY22148), I provide psychological and performance enhancement services in my independent practice. I work with high performance athletes, sport professionals, teams, athletic departments, sports medicine clinics, and others. I am a psychological service provider for the USA Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Also, as a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley (Cal), I teach and provide supervision to graduate students.
For my undergraduate education, I went to high school at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC. I later graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU) with a BA in English, psychology, and sociology. I was quite enthusiastic about adventure sports at that time.
As a postgraduate, I worked as a wilderness guide/therapist for “at-risk” youth and others. I spent several years living in remote places across geographies, seasons, and the globe. I learned that effective emotion regulation as well as performing under pressure are required for survival. The wilderness also offered me solace, perspective, and fun, as it still does today.
My focus dovetailed towards psychology. I earned my MA and PhD in clinical psychology at Cal. I also completed an APA accredited clinical psychology internship and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). My training is grounded in developmental psychopathology and empirically-based treatment. I conducted research at CU, the National Institute of Mental Health, Cal, the University of Oslo, and UCSF. Consequently, my current psychology practice is based in science.
During my training and beyond, I have provided a motley of mental health services to a diversity of people across varied settings. Please see my CV for details. I settled as a faculty clinician and researcher at the UCSF Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Clinic, which serves people with complex psychiatric problems, in particular emotion dysregulation.
I deduced that DBT patients and high performance athletes share a need for emotion regulation skills. Both must manage their strong emotion while under intense stress. Thus DBT is relevant to high performance athletes, with modification. So I pursued a certificate in sports psychology at John F. Kennedy University. With a practicum at Cal, I became an AASP Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) for athletes and sport professionals.
Now, with Dialectical Mental Sports Skills, I fully dedicate my work to the improvement of student-athletes’ mental health and sport performance.
I currently live in San Francisco with my wife, children, and two doodles.
