Natasha P. Trujillo, Ph.D is a counseling and sport psychologist dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and organizations build awareness of self, others, and the world to reach their full potential in and out of their craft. She owns a private practice where she seeks to educate, consult, and provide mental health and sport psychology services that are evidenced-based and collaborative. She works primarily with athletes, performers, and high-achievers to help them find balance in their pursuit of success and acceptance of their own humanity. She strives to help people learn how to simply “be”, and get better at what they do. She has specializations in grief/loss, eating disorders, trauma, anxiety, & identity development.
Natasha P. Trujillo, Ph.D, Counseling and Sport Psychologist
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
I am a counseling and sport psychologist who currently lives in Denver, CO, USA. I am an avid sports fan (a mega Tennessee Lady Volunteer basketball fan), a runner, an author, a reader, and an academic aficionado. I enjoy traveling and being exposed to diverse ideas that allow me to question my perspective and perhaps even change my own mind. I am a lover of language and the arts and appreciate all forms of creativity, especially those that draw attention to humanity’s need for meaning- and sense-making. I am fascinated with all things grief/loss and advocate for greater focus and communication about how universal these themes are in our lives. I believe that if we normalized them more, perhaps there would be stronger potential to bring people together and cope in effective ways.
Can you introduce your business and provide a brief overview and its focus?
I moved into private practice full-time in April 2022. Through my practice, NPT Therapy I offer individual/group therapy, mental skills training/performance enhancement, team interventions, coaching/leadership consultations, behavioral observations, suicide prevention training and speaking engagements/workshops. I also offer provider consultations and supervision for other mental health professionals needing support/guidance in my top areas of competence or needing supervision to become fully licensed. I work primarily with adolescent, college, professional, and Olympic/Paralympic athletes, both current and retired, although you need not be an athlete to reach out. I am licensed in over 40 states in the US so I can work with people in a variety of places, which is exceptionally helpful given that most of my clients are frequently traveling for competition.
I always explain that I am trained and licensed as a general psychologist who specializes in working with athletic/performance populations. My focus is to help high-achieving individuals learn to better view all of their salient identities, and refine ways of deriving self-worth, all while working collaboratively to help them alleviate what’s keeping them from elevating their game (in and out of sport). I seek to help my clients transform their being to reach their potential and gain more satisfaction in life.
What philosophy or approach underlies your therapeutic services, and how does it distinguish your practice?
Communication, collaboration, and flexibility define my approach to treatment. I believe the core tenets necessary to increase motivation and commitment to change begin with a strong therapeutic relationship built on trust, understanding, and hope that my client’s goals are achievable. I like to remain curious and tentative in my approach to help my clients come to their own solutions about what will help them work towards success and satisfaction in their lives. I strongly value the expertise of other professionals/supports and enjoy collaborating with others to provide a holistic and comprehensive approach to care. You will often find me working alongside dieticians, physicians, physical therapists, athletic trainers, coaches, chiropractors, massage therapists, strength coaches and more.
I primarily work from an eclectic lens, often blending elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal process therapy, systems/multicultural perspectives, dialectic behavioral therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy to address treatment goals. I believe looking at each person as a whole person is imperative, thus I do focus on both internal and external factors and environments that have impacted experiences, relationships, beliefs, and desired change. In my opinion, the systemic and societal workings have to be looked at to truly understand and help others grow in inequitable spaces.
How do you ensure a positive and supportive experience for your clients? Are there specific principles or methods you prioritize in your therapy practice?
It starts from the beginning. I share my approach, ask questions, and allow clients to ask me questions in order to assess our fit and give them a taste of what working with me will be like. I also normalize aspects of therapy that are unique/challenging. I give them permission to say whatever they want, to bring up any topic under the sun, and to bring all aspects of themselves, unapologetically. I am authentic in my own reactions and try to show up as my whole self as well so that I demonstrate walking the walk, not just talking the talk. That doesn’t mean I self-disclose inappropriately, but I often use immediacy and work to build an authentic professional relationship with each person, bringing focus to our similarities and differences as needed, given that these things can and do impact the therapeutic space.
I always ask two key questions at the beginning of a new therapeutic relationship: What in your life will be different as a result of working with me? And, what will occur internally and externally that will help validate your decision to take this risk with me? These questions allow me to understand where a client is coming from, what our treatment plan may look like, and conceptualize how I can be useful. It is a spoken agreement if you will, that allows me to then tailor the principles and methods I will prioritize in each relationship. Re-evaluation and changes as needed then follow.
Could you share more details about the specific therapeutic services or specializations offered on your business? What makes them unique or effective?
My most frequent clinical areas of emphasis are grief/loss, eating disorders, trauma, anxiety/depressive disorders, perfectionism, and performance psychology. I think a unique niche of my practice is the way I weave grief and loss into the other clinical areas I work with. For example, I look at both death and non-death losses through a grief lens, and I conceptualize loss through a gains and losses perspective, meaning that there are both setbacks and growth in all lived experiences, even the most positive ones. This means I hone into the duality that exists within life and help people understand and work through their feelings while accepting and processing that we cannot have happiness without sadness, love without loss, satisfaction without dissatisfaction, etc. I often help people conceptualize other clinical issues from this lens. For example, I will talk with clients about the varied losses they experience as they recover from an eating disorder. Yes, the recovery is ultimately positive, but there is a perceived sense of security, control, body image/physical changes, relationship changes, routine changes, and more that are all lost, and often require acknowledgment and grieving to allow for a healthier self to emerge.
With regard to trauma, I am certified in Cognitive Processing Therapy, which is an evidence-based therapeutic approach to treating PTSD. CPT is a manualized approach to trauma-work that is a little more direct and strategic than other types of therapy.
I would also say that having the background and training for both athletics and clinical psychology allow for deeper understanding and processing in terms of how important the athletic identity can be to someone and how impactful those environments can be in someone’s development and belief system over time.
How do you contribute to the well-being of the community?
Given that my practice is all remote and I work with people all around the country, I lean more into how I approach my clinical work in a way that can allow for small changes in one part of the system to slowly build and make greater community change. I focus a lot of aspects of multiculturism and use feminist and systems theories/interventions alongside more skill-based treatment domains like dialectical behavior therapy to assist clients in developing their own voice and ability to use it assertively.
An example of this in action is working with college students to become more aware of problematic patterns in their departments, use their voice to advocate, and learn to collaborate with others and work towards a common cause to better the environment they are in. I also then try to work with coaches, administrators, and other leadership personnel to address concerns from both a top-down and bottom-up approach. Although I am not trained as an industrial/organizational psychologist, I really love this clinical focus and do my homework/consult as necessary to utilize some of the core principles in the work that I do within organizations.
I also try to be aware of events/causes happening in the community and donate money, time, resources, or my platform to spread awareness and messages as appropriate. For example, I enjoy being a collaborator with the National Eating Disorder Association during Eating Disorder Awareness week, where I am able to collaborate with other excellent providers and spread knowledge and awareness to improve understanding, access to care, and push much-needed initiatives to get people the quality care they need.
What are your future plans or aspirations for your therapy practice? Are there upcoming projects, events, or improvements you'd like to highlight?
Ultimately, I would like to expand the practice to have several diverse providers in terms of both identities and areas of expertise. I also play around with the idea of building the practice to embody more than just mental health services because of how importantly I view collaborative care. This may look like expanding the practice to have family therapy, assessment services, psychiatric services, physical therapy or medical services etc.
I aspire to be someone who can be trusted in the grief/loss space, so hope to carve out more opportunities to educate, normalize, and assist those when loss strikes. I have considered some sort of crisis support or immediate services for athletes/teams, or organizations after a major loss.
I am also in the process of publishing my first book, And She Was Never the Same Again, (tentatively out in April 2024) and am considering several different ways the practice may evolve as a result of this undertaking. The book is focused on exploring the nuances of grief/loss through personalized narratives of events and a synthesis of how the events impact the key players over time. I can foresee potential speaking engagements, workshops, and maybe even group therapy services. Lots to consider! - Tell us about your greatest career achievement so far.
I would have to say that taking the risk to embark on my own practice that is 100% fueled by me has been the most rewarding. It has stretched me to grow not only as a psychologist but as an entrepreneur. I have had to use problem-solving skills and learn the ropes of fields like finance, marketing, law, advising, and more. Although it is scary at times and requires much time and energy, I am proud that it has steadily increased since day one and I have been able to supersede my expectations and reinvent my goals and milestones on a regular basis. Knowing that I can do it on my own has been liberating, and I find the work more fulfilling and although still stressful, it is stressful in more satisfying ways. You learn the most when you take risks that scare you. I am constantly re-evaluating and dreaming up small ways to tweak things and reaching out to who I can learn from to strengthen what I am building.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
The stigma of mental illness and the respect mental health deserves. The stigma continues to be a barrier and although progress has been made, many obstacles still exist in normalizing therapy (and making it equitable and accessible) as you would any other type of wellness services. With clients who are skeptical or fearful of therapy, I often begin talking to them by using the analogy of a physical injury. If you are hurt, you would not be ashamed or embarrassed to go see an orthopedic doctor, who may then refer you to a physical therapist for ongoing treatment. Thus, if you suffer an emotional or mental injury (which we all do), it should be no different to meet with a therapist regularly to rehab the concern and get you back to doing what you love and feeling like yourself. The mind is a muscle and deserves much time and effort just like nutrition, sleep, exercise, faith/spirituality, and other components of well-being.
I have also noticed many differences in the respect that mental health providers get in comparison to other types of healthcare providers. Even more nuanced than that, the social identities of providers (e.g., race, gender, etc.) can make respect even harder to come by. Sometimes it may be that a medical doctor is referred to by Dr. in a space, but a Ph.D./Psy.D. psychologist is referred to by their first name. Or, women providers may be referred to by their first name only, or by Dr. (insert first name here), or are asked what they’d like to be called whereas male doctors are referred to by their professional titles without question. I seldom hear male doctors be referred to as Dr. (first name here). I would encourage others in these fields to have conversations with professionals of all backgrounds and generations about both of these ideas. Rich discussion opportunities!
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
To answer this question, I decided to go with the first idea that popped into my head. Grief. Moments of suffering and significant loss are what have carried me through to where I am today and who I am today. When I come face to face with failing or having to take a loss, taking ownership and realizing what I want to do with the pieces I still have are what have allowed me to redefine mental toughness for myself. This has at times caused reinvention of my beliefs, and stubborn recognition of what I do and do not have control over. Taking risks, not getting what you want, and accepting the duality of life are all moments that have led to more resilience and an ability to adapt and survive this crazy life.
