(he/him)
New to Grow
I’m Royce L. Jones, MS, LPCC, MBA — a licensed professional counselor associate, Navy veteran, and mental performance consultant dedicated to helping individuals grow with intention. I specialize in working with student-athletes, high-performing professionals, and men navigating identity, leadership, and life transitions. My approach blends evidence-based practices like EMDR, mindfulness, and performance psychology with culturally responsive care to create a space that is honest, practical, and growth-focused. My goal is simple: to help you build awareness, strengthen resilience, and become the best version of yourself — on and off the field.
In our first session, you can expect a relaxed, welcoming space where you don’t have to perform, impress, or have the “right” words. My goal is to understand you — not just the issue that brought you in, but your story, your strengths, your stressors, and what matters most to you. We’ll talk about what’s been weighing on you, what you’d like to change, and what progress would look like in your life. I may ask thoughtful questions to help clarify patterns, identities, or goals, but there’s no pressure to share everything at once. You can also expect transparency. I’ll explain how I work, what approaches I use (such as EMDR, mindfulness, or performance-based strategies), and we’ll begin shaping a plan together. The first session is about building trust, setting direction, and making sure you feel comfortable moving forward.
What stands out about my therapeutic approach is the balance between depth and practicality. We don’t just talk about problems — we identify patterns, understand where they come from, and build tools you can apply immediately in your daily life. I integrate EMDR, mindfulness, performance psychology, and culturally responsive therapy to address both past experiences and present performance. That means we can process unresolved experiences, strengthen emotional regulation, and improve confidence and focus — all at the same time. Clients often tell me they appreciate that our work feels honest, structured, and growth-oriented. I provide accountability without judgment. The result is increased self-awareness, clearer identity, stronger boundaries, and measurable progress — not just insight, but change you can feel in your relationships, leadership, and performance.
My ideal client is a high-performing individual—often a student-athlete, coach, or professional—who appears successful on the outside but is internally navigating pressure, identity confusion, or emotional fatigue. They are driven, disciplined, and accustomed to pushing through adversity, yet they recognize that mental and emotional barriers are beginning to impact their performance, relationships, or overall sense of fulfillment. This client is not necessarily in crisis, but they are at a point of awareness. They understand that ignoring their mental health is no longer sustainable. They may struggle with anxiety, performance pressure, transitions (such as injury, career shifts, or life after sports), or balancing multiple identities beyond their primary role. They are seeking clarity, emotional regulation, and a deeper understanding of who they are outside of what they do. They value growth, accountability, and practical tools they can apply in real time. They are open to approaches like mindfulness, performance psychology, and trauma-informed care, even if they are new to the process. Trust and cultural understanding are especially important—they want to feel seen, respected, and not judged, particularly if they come from communities where mental health has historically been stigmatized. My ideal client is coachable. They are willing to engage, reflect, and do the work both inside and outside of sessions. They are motivated by becoming a better version of themselves—not just for personal success, but for their families, teams, and communities. Ultimately, they are seeking alignment: between their identity, purpose, and performance. They want to move from surviving and performing under pressure to living with intention, confidence, and peace—while still striving for excellence.
Anxiety
Men's Issues
Military/Veterans
Addiction
Anger Management
Career Counseling
Black / African American
Man
Adults (18 to 64)
Teenagers (13 to 17)
Kentucky
Arlo
Christian Counseling
I integrate evidence-based therapeutic techniques with a client's faith as an active resource in the healing process. This can be especially meaningful for individuals navigating grief, trauma, shame, moral injury, or identity struggles, where spiritual questions are often just as pressing as psychological ones. For many clients, knowing their counselor understands and respects their faith removes a significant barrier to seeking help in the first place — making licensed Christian counseling not just culturally responsive, but clinically effective.
Acceptance and commitment (ACT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a powerful and increasingly well-researched therapeutic approach that helps clients stop fighting their inner experiences and instead build a life driven by what genuinely matters to them. Rather than trying to eliminate painful thoughts, emotions, or memories, ACT teaches clients to observe and accept those experiences without being controlled by them — a skill called psychological flexibility. Through core processes like mindfulness, cognitive defusion (creating distance from unhelpful thought patterns), and values clarification, clients learn to take meaningful action even in the presence of discomfort or uncertainty. This makes ACT particularly effective for anxiety, depression, chronic pain, trauma, and life transitions, where the attempt to suppress or avoid difficult internal experiences often makes things worse rather than better. For many clients, ACT feels less like fixing what's broken and more like learning to carry life's inevitable hardships with greater clarity, openness, and purpose — which can be a profoundly freeing shift in how they relate to themselves and the world around them.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is another widely researched therapeutic approaches available, built on the idea that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are deeply interconnected — and that shifting unhelpful thinking patterns can meaningfully change how we feel and function. Through structured, skills-based techniques, clients learn to identify and challenge distorted thoughts, build healthier behavioral patterns, and develop practical tools they can use in real time. CBT has strong empirical support across a wide range of concerns including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and relationship difficulties, making it one of the most versatile and empowering approaches in mental health care.
EMDR
My experience with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) reflects a trauma-informed, performance-centered approach that helps clients understand how past experiences influence their current thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Many of the individuals I work with—especially student-athletes and high performers—may not initially identify their experiences as trauma, but they often recognize patterns like anxiety, pressure, identity struggles, or negative self-beliefs rooted in earlier life events. I begin by establishing safety and trust, focusing on rapport-building, emotional regulation, and grounding skills. This ensures clients feel in control before entering the reprocessing phases. I emphasize that EMDR is not about reliving experiences but about processing them in a way that reduces their emotional intensity. In the reprocessing phase, I help clients identify target memories, the negative beliefs attached to them, and the emotions and body sensations they carry. Through bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements or tapping, clients are able to reprocess these experiences and replace limiting beliefs with more adaptive, empowering ones. This approach stands out because I connect EMDR to performance and identity. Clients not only heal but also gain clarity, confidence, and control—allowing them to move from survival-based patterns to intentional living in all areas of life.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a structured, skills-based approach originally developed for individuals experiencing intense emotional dysregulation, and it has since proven highly effective for a broad range of concerns including anxiety, depression, trauma, self-harm, and relationship instability. DBT teaches four core skill sets — mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness — giving clients concrete tools to manage overwhelming emotions without resorting to harmful or avoidant behaviors. For many clients, DBT is transformative precisely because it balances acceptance of where they are with active strategies for change, making it both validating and practically empowering.