Matthew brings 20 years of experience in human service fields helping people find their true selves through understanding what diverted the course of true self expression in the first place. Often life presented hindrances early and often: important relationships that did not meet your basic needs, either by not understanding you, or through outright disregard […]
Matthew brings 20 years of experience in human service fields helping people find their true selves through understanding what diverted the course of true self expression in the first place. Often life presented hindrances early and often: important relationships that did not meet your basic needs, either by not understanding you, or through outright disregard of who you were and what you needed. Better understanding the impact of those experiences helps us forge the way toward a truer self which feels authentic, which will steadfastly weather emotional turmoil, and which will find deep gratification in life’s pursuits: intimate relationships, employment, leisure. After insight, another part of our work involves finding concrete steps to manage the symptoms of false-self adaptations: a compromised sense of agency, reduced self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and repetitive unsatisfying relationship patterns. Apart from early formational relationships, another pathway toward these life-impeding symptoms can emerge from negative life events: trauma, relationship rupture (i.e. break-up, divorce, interpersonal conflict), employment termination, or confusion in professional direction. These events also greatly impede the ability to go through life mindfully, confidently, and with a clear sense of purpose. Whatever the source of your particular struggles, we can chart a course through them with a collaborative plan involving both insight and skill building. We can move from despair into hopefulness, from lack of control to agency, ultimately arriving at solutions that are consistent with your values and in harmony with your true self.
Areas of Expertise: Matthew’s primary areas of expertise include 1) individuals and couples struggling with unsatisfying personal relationships; 2) people who have experienced themselves as ineffective, and have, as a result, a low sense of self-esteem, and perhaps who also have difficulty controlling their own emotional responses to the ebb and flow of life; 3) veterans and individuals who have experienced trauma, and are struggling to manage the symptoms which emerge from traumatic events; 4) families and couples who are working toward finding union and balance, in which both the person and the system can thrive; 5) any type of athlete, performer, or professional who is finding obstructions to optimal performance. Toward this end, Matt is the founder of Altius Performance Works, offering services for performers of all stripes. For more information on this work please visit: https://matthew-munich.squarespace.com, where you can also find his blog “Floating & Stinging” on facing and mastering impediments to peak performance.
Professional Positions: Matthew has worked in general mental health settings at several levels of acuity: in-patient, day-treatment, and outpatient settings, where he has treated the spectrum of mental health presentations. Matthew has also worked in community agencies where he helped victims of violence recover from the symptoms emerging from those experiences. He has most recently worked at the general mental health clinic Veterans Hospital in Bedford, MA, where, in addition to working on posttraumatic stress disorder in its acute and chronic forms, he also worked with couples, mood disorders, and veterans experiencing upheavals in life circumstances. Matt has received advanced training in several evidence-based trauma protocols, including several cognitive behavioral protocols, and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a modality useful for those with severe emotional regulation problems. Matthew has also received advanced training in the use of yoga, yogic techniques and mindfulness practices in the service of providing relief for a host of mental health presentations.
To see a sampling of selected publications, go here.
Dr. Foynes has over 15 years of experience working with people coping with very human struggles: maintaining satisfying relationships, managing intense emotions and thoughts without feeling consumed by them, living in the present moment without being haunted by memories of the past or worries about the future, and arriving at a place where our lives […]
Dr. Foynes has over 15 years of experience working with people coping with very human struggles: maintaining satisfying relationships, managing intense emotions and thoughts without feeling consumed by them, living in the present moment without being haunted by memories of the past or worries about the future, and arriving at a place where our lives are dictated by us and our values, rather than by traumas and other stressful life experiences. You may already have insight into what isn’t working about your life, and want help figuring out how to transform those insights into effective steps toward change. You may have tried to problem-solve with limited success, despite substantial investments of time, money, and energy. Understandably, you may feel alone and misunderstood, and hopeless, discouraged, or skeptical about the possibility for change. Together, we work to identify how your life would need to be different in order to decrease your distress and suffering, and develop a tailored approach to meet your unique needs and goals. We draw from cutting-edge research and empirically-derived best practices to select approaches that resonate with you, and artfully craft a plan that builds on your strengths and directly targets your specific struggles. We balance acceptance of where you are in any particular moment with your desire for change. We find and build compassion and resilience.
Dr. Foynes is an expert in working with 1) individuals struggling with interpersonal relationships, intense emotional responses and thought patterns, effective coping with stressful situations, and staying present and mindful; 2) survivors of sexual, physical, and emotional trauma; 3) trauma survivors whose histories are activated by pregnancy, labor and delivery, nursing, and parenting; 4) individuals, couples, and families who are coping with unexpected complications, traumas, and losses in birthing mothers, infants and children (e.g,. birth trauma, miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, medical illness and complications in infants and children); 5) people experiencing grief and loss, including trauma-related grief, complicated grief, and grief due to a traumatic loss (e.g., parents who have lost children, loss of loved ones due to suicide, murder, acute or chronic illness, accident, etc.); 6) people who have experienced discrimination, marginalization, and/or trauma due to some aspect of their identity (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religiosity); 7) professionals with traumatic stress symptoms who have experienced primary and/or secondary trauma in the course of their work, as well as those who are coping with compassion fatigue and burnout; 8) trauma-related sexual functioning difficulties (e.g., difficulties with desire, arousal, pain, orgasm, sexual satisfaction, sense of self as a sexual being, body image in sexual contexts); 9) veterans and servicemembers who have experienced trauma during military service including military sexual trauma, physical injuries, loss of fellow servicemembers, combat, and vicarious trauma.
Currently, Dr. Foynes is a national staff educator and trainer for VA’s National Military Sexual Trauma Support Team (MST) and the Women’s Health Sciences Division of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Prior to this national-level work, Dr. Foynes served as a Clinical Psychologist and the Director of Clinical Training in the Women’s Stress Disorder Treatment Team, a women’s trauma clinic at VA Boston. To date, she has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and educational products, and has trained hundreds of clinicians and other providers via national lectures, presentations, workshops, and trainings. She directs the VA’s national MST Consultation Program and serves as a national consultant for both the National Center for PTSD’s National PTSD Consultation Program and the Interpersonal Psychotherapy National Training Program. She also has been actively involved in a variety of national initiatives promoting mental health and relationship functioning in pregnant and new mothers who have histories of sexual trauma. Dr. Foynes provides mentorship and supervision to trainees at all levels as well as therapy to clients through both trauma and sexual health clinics. Dr. Foynes previously held an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University’s School of Medicine. Dr. Foynes conducts research primarily in the area of trauma and recovery.
Prior to completing her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Oregon, Dr. Foynes completed her predoctoral fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine, where she received intensive training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). She completed her Clinical Postdoctoral Fellowship in PTSD at the National Center for PTSD, where she continued to receive advanced training in a variety of evidence-based assessment and treatment approaches for a broad spectrum of trauma-related mental health difficulties, including posttraumatic stress. Dr. Foynes has undergone rigorous training programs and achieved national-level certification in Prolonged Exposure, Cognitive Processing, and Interpersonal Therapy, and is in the process of pursuing national certification in DBT through the Linehan Board. As a long-time practitioner of yoga, mindfulness, and meditation, Dr. Foynes also regularly integrates mindfulness-based therapies into her practice. She is a certified yoga instructor and has received advanced training in both trauma-informed and modified yoga practice. In addition to teaching yoga in the community, she teaches trauma-sensitive yoga in the Intensive Clinical Program at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Home Base Program.
To see a sampling of selected publications, go here.
