Jesse Dzombak, Pre-Doctoral Psychology Extern
Background: Jesse completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan and earned his MS degree in Clinical Psychology from Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where he is a fifth-year doctoral candidate. Prior to graduate school, he worked at the Minnesota Center for Eating Disorders Research and studied tic disorders in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Prior clinical training sites include Kennedy Krieger, the Gynecologic Cancer Center of Excellence at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and Children’s National. He has worked with people from age 0 to 82 and has enjoyed seeing people at every stage in between.
Approach to Therapy: Jesse is trained in exposure and response prevention, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), comprehensive behavioral intervention for tics (CBIT), motivational interviewing, and habit reversal therapy. His collaborative approach to therapy is guided foremost by the individual’s experiences, values, and goals. In the therapy hour (and in life), he values genuineness, compassion, and creativity. He offers a humanistic approach to behavioral therapy, individualizing therapeutic techniques to help people get where they want to go. To that end, he often combines traditional behavioral techniques with guided meditation and creative exercises.
Clinical Interests: Jesse works with conditions that involve behaviors that people feel like they cannot stop. He is especially interested in ‘not-just-right’ experiences in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other conditions, and in compulsive aspects of self-injury. Clinically, he has worked with OCD, skin picking, hoarding, hair pulling, compulsive internet/technology use, nonsuicidal self-injury, difficulty adjusting to life transitions, medical anxiety, health anxiety, specific phobia, tic disorders, stereotypic movement disorder, disordered eating, ADHD, autism, and depressive disorders. He has also worked with spiritual and existential concerns, including death anxiety and meaning making.