Spring Well-Being
Robin Casey, PsyD
Providing Therapy for Adults Who are Ready to Feel Alive Again
You’re going about life, putting one foot in front of the other, and from the outside you appear to be doing well. Internally, it feels different. You're going through the motions. You're overwhelmed, disconnected from yourself, and your relationships aren’t as rewarding as they once were. You feel like something has to change, but you aren’t sure where to start. You keep hoping one day you’ll have time to sit down and listen to yourself. However, when you do have time you find yourself avoiding or numbing your emotions. You’re too tired to think, let alone feel, and something about listening to yourself seems unnerving.
Sometimes imagining a change can be the first step. Imagine feeling clearer about who you are and what you want. Imagine a growing sense of courage to start something new, have a conversation you know you need to have, set boundaries, and stop rushing, perfecting, and people-pleasing. Imagine embodying your life with peace, pleasure, and purpose.
If you’re interested in this type of change, therapy can help and I’d love to work with you. Hi, I’m Dr. Robin Casey, founder of Spring Psychological Services. I know that finding the right therapist can feel overwhelming. It may help to know that the most important part is feeling like you and your therapist are a good fit. My hope is that the information on this page will give you a good sense of my approach to therapy, why I pursued this career in the first place, and the types of clients I have the most success helping. I’ll also share a bit about my education, work experiences, and life outside of work.
Clients I See
There’s a lot of information here so I’d like to start with you! I tend to work best with clients who are open-minded, hard-working, and interested in gaining insight into themselves. My clients are interested in living lives with greater connection, passion, and purpose.
The clients I tend to work with view therapy as an experience worth having, not simply a means to an end. They may or may not be nervous about getting started, but they feel drawn to begin the process. My clients are often interested in learning strategies and coping skills for certain areas of their lives. Mostly, they're interested in having a space to connect with and learn more about themselves. My clients tend to believe that knowing one’s self well is what helps them reflect upon why they're searching for certain strategies and coping skills in the first place.
Why Work With Me
My approach to therapy is thoughtful. For starters, I view therapy as taking place within the context of biology, relationships, and culture. I will always consider your medical history, earliest and most recent relationships, cultural experiences, and identity when working together. Furthermore, over the course of my career I’ve naturally given a lot of thought to the various types of therapies, and I’ve learned to integrate them in an authentic and meaningful way.
You might be asking, “What are the different types of therapies, and what does it mean to integrate them meaningfully?” To keep it simple, I’d say there are two overarching types of therapy. They aren’t mutually exclusive, and I definitely use both in my practice. Let me explain…
On one hand, there’s therapy that’s intended to teach strategies and coping skills so a person can manage things more effectively and make healthy changes. This type of therapy can be incredibly valuable, particularly as a starting place, and I enjoy helping clients in this way. For example, I often use my knowledge of lifestyle medicine, cognitive-behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, and organizational systems to help clients refine their goals and maintain progress over time. My clients report greater clarity, hope, and motivation during this type of therapy.
On the flip side of goal-oriented therapy, there’s therapy that’s intended to help you explore, unearth, and better understand yourself so that any changes you decide to make come from a place of deep knowing. At first glance, this may sound like the easier of the two styles - both for the therapist and the client. In my experience, that’s simply not the case. It requires significant emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal skills for a therapist to work in this way. It also requires a good amount of courage on behalf of the client. That being said, this is my most cherished way of working with clients. My clients would also tell you that the process gets easier and feels incredibly liberating over time.
So, if goal-oriented therapy aims to contain emotion, exploratory therapy aims to crack you open. Both styles describe my work, but the latter describes it best. Perhaps more importantly, I have enough experience to know when and how to toggle between these styles as needed. Doing this work is truly what I’m meant to do.
At the end of the day, I enjoy working with clients who are courageously trying to understand their emotions, their relationships, and their own behaviors. These are generous human beings. If you think about it, when a person pursues inner growth, it’s a gift to everyone around them. It’s been said that therapy is an inside job. I believe that’s true. It’s also true that the reach is far and wide.
Let choice whisper in your ear and love murmur in your heart.
Be ready, here comes life.
~Maya Angelou
Why I Became a Psychologist
I initially pursued a career as a psychologist because from a young age I had a calling to ease emotional suffering in the lives of others. This is likely because I experienced some of my greatest challenges to date in early childhood, when I didn’t quite have the language to describe my feelings. A large part of my heartache was about seeing the adults in my life experience their own pain and sensing that they too struggled to identify their feelings, put them into words, and walk through them mindfully.
I'd like to acknowledge that these emotional skills are challenging to hone in their own right. The challenge becomes more difficult if you weren't raised to lean into emotion and if the culture tells you to keep your emotions hidden. When we can’t communicate our feelings, we have to swim in them alone or find a way to drown them out. But here's the thing: When we drown them out they're still there, and in more ways than one, whether we realize it or not, we're drifting in their steady current.
For whatever reason, I was compelled to go where the feelings were. I wanted to experience and understand them. Well, sometimes I wanted to run from them, I’m human after all. But mostly, I wanted to learn from them. You have to know how to get quiet for that type of work, and fortunately I’ve always been accused of being too quiet.
I think therapy is one way to get quiet and know ourselves well enough to live the lives of our dreams. Part of you may be asking, “Why should I pursue that?” and “Is that really possible?” Because you’ve read this far, another part of you likely knows the answers. But in the spirit of asking good questions, I’ll leave you with this: Why not? What else are we here for if not to try to live meaningfully?
Professional Background
Work Experience:
Over the course of my career I’ve served in leadership roles, helped develop programs for substance use disorders, and provided supervision for psychologists in training. I've worked in university counseling centers, a violence prevention program, an outpatient center for eating disorders, large healthcare organizations, and private practice. I still enjoy learning new things within my profession and keeping my skills sharp. My love for learning has resulted in becoming board certified in lifestyle medicine, skilled in motivational interviewing, and a part-time faculty member at Kennesaw State University.
Education and Training:
Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (2011): Georgia School of Professional Psychology, Atlanta, GA
Postdoctoral Fellowship: Georgia State University’s Counseling and Testing Center (focus: addiction)
Predoctoral Internship: College of William and Mary Counseling Center (focus: eating disorders)
Graduate Therapy Training: Emory University Counseling and Testing Center (focus: anxiety, depression, stress management, biofeedback)
Graduate Assessment Training: Atlanta Center for Eating Disorders (focus: comprehensive assessment of eating disorders)
Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, Minor in English Literature (2005): Georgia State University
Professional Associations:
American Psychological Association
Georgia Psychological Association
American College of Lifestyle Medicine
National Register of Health Service Psychologists
Atlanta Group Psychotherapy Society
Personal Life
Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my husband and our two young children. I’m often running after and schlepping my little ones around town. Some days I love it, and some days I recite the serenity prayer.
I love good conversation, trail running, cooking, reading, and writing. Do I do all of these things as often as I’d like? Absolutely not. But I do know I enjoy them, and I make an effort to do at least one of them on a consistent basis. More recently, that’s been running.
I completed my first marathon in 2022. It was a disaster. However, I did finish and I learned a few things along the way. Now I’m looking forward to my “running just for the hell of it” schedule. I’d like to add that if my younger self read this, she’d give me the side eye, believing herself incapable of running a mile. Growth is a challenging, fun, and surprising process!
