About Dr. Ali Navidi | AliNavidi.com

Clinical Psychology

I am a licensed clinical psychologist with a private practice in Northern Virginia. If you are looking to come and see me as a patient, then you will probably be better off at this website:
http://www.drnavidi.com/

I have a diverse practice where I treat children, adolescents and adults for a variety of mental health problems. I use a cognitive behavioral framework and I tend to get really good results when I have a motivated patient.

Clinical Hypnosis
- I have spent many years studying hypnosis and founded the NVSCH, which is the Northern VA chapter of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis. If the patient is interested, I like to add at least a little hypnosis into everything I do. I consider it the special sauce that helps people to get faster results.
- It turns out that hypnosis and cognitive behavioral therapy work really well for IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), FAP (functional abdominal pain), and chronic pain in general (and the research supports that). These areas have become sub-specialties for me and I get a lot of direct referrals from doctors whose other patients have gotten very good results with me.

Leadership Coaching
- In parallel with my clinical work, I have had the good fortune to lead a second life as a leadership coach.
- I have mainly worked with leadership within federal agencies such as FDA DEA, DOE, and NRC. I have also worked with private companies, small business owners, and start-ups.
- I tend to work with leaders in two main areas, which are 1) becoming more productive and 2) becoming more effective with others.
- Productivity
  - Procrastination
  - Productivity Systems
  - Time Management
  - Stress Management and Preventing Burnout
- Interpersonal
  - Managing Conflict
  - Dealing with Difficult People
  - Influence Skills
  - Political Savvy

Procrastination
- I got interested in procrastination because there was a certain kind of patient who just couldn’t make changes in their life outside of the therapy office. No matter how effective and powerful the techniques and strategies were in the session they were never able to translate that into changes in their life. Or if they were able to initiate a change they were unable to sustain it despite it’s helpfulness.
- I have found that the more I have learned about the sometimes complicated dynamics of procrastination the more effective I have become in helping people make and sustain change.
- Furthermore, being a former procrastinator, I like to try out everything I learn on myself first. Since defeating procrastination isn’t like turning off a switch, but more akin to staying in shape, I get to stay in shape by helping others.

Background
- Emergency Mental Health
  - I have spent a good number of years toiling away in the underworld of mental health emergency services. There, I spent most of my time working in mobile crisis. I would go to people’s houses, sometimes with police backup and sometimes without, to assess if they were a danger to themselves or others.
  - Here, I also got to work with the police dealing with the victims and survivors of accidents and also working as a consultant on hostage / barricades.
- Biotechnology
  - Out of college, with my degree in microbiology, I worked for a time on such things as yeast exocytosis and exploring the genes related to Alzheimer’s.