He works out of the Laguna Beach office and by telehealth across California.

The free consult comes first, so you can hear how he works and we can tell you honestly whether he is the right fit, before anyone commits to anything.

David works with anxiety using cognitive and behavioral strategies, which in practice means looking at what the anxiety is asking you to do and then working out, deliberately and in small steps, what happens when you do not do it.

For tics, Tourette's, hair pulling and skin picking, the method is habit reversal and CBIT. These are structured, teachable approaches rather than open-ended talking, and they are among the few with real evidence behind them for these particular problems.

He also brings a family systems background, which matters because a child's tic or a teenager's compulsion is rarely only happening to the child. Where it helps, the family is part of the work rather than an audience to it.

His view of therapy with children is that it should be engaging at their level and genuinely enjoyable, on the straightforward grounds that a child who does not want to be in the room will not do the work. He is an amateur magician, which turns out to be useful for this.

David trained in Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics, the structured approach used for tics and Tourette's, and he trained in EMDR with Francine Shapiro, who developed it.

He co-founded Third Street Counseling with Michele Hall-Preston in 2020, and his approach still informs how the practice works.