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.
Areas of Expertise
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.
Professional Positions
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.
Advanced Trainings and Certifications
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.
Availability: Dr. Foynes is licensed to see clients in NC (virtual & in-person), MA (virtual only), & 42 PSYPACT-participating states (virtual only). To see if you live in a PSYPACT-participating state, please go view the map on the PSYPACT website here. Since Dr. Foynes also works with people in other states and countries for holistic coaching and other non-therapy services, please contact her directly if you are interested in her coaching and/or consultation services outside of mental health as those offerings are guided by different rules and regulations.
To see a sampling of selected publications, go here.