Jessica R.M. Goodnight, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and owner of the Anxiety and Trauma Clinic of Atlanta. She offers specialty mental health services to people struggling with fear and anxiety, including anxiety and emotional pain that has resulted from traumatic experiences. She offers effective treatment for:

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• Anxiety and fear-related problems, such as

  • Excessive worry

  • Social anxiety

  • Panic attacks

  • Specific fears​

• Trauma-related problems such as

  • Traumatic stress reactions

  • Sexual dysfunction after sexual trauma

  • Complicated grief​

  • Recovery from cult experiences

  • Religious deconstruction/deconversion

• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

• Emotion dysregulation

• Suicidal thoughts

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Dr. Goodnight has been trained in and uses multiple forms of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), such as different forms of exposure therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). She loves to strike that balance between being warm, compassionate, genuine, and validating, while also helping you enact change to build a better life, even though it's challenging. Dr. Goodnight always uses the current research on your specific difficulties to guide her treatment recommendations. She also makes sure to keep treatment plans individualized and collaborative, ensuring that psychotherapy meets your individual needs and treatment goals and considers your unique social and historical context. That means that your treatment is yours - created just for you - but is also evidence-based, meaning that it is likely to be helpful because it is guided by scientific knowledge.

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Dr. Goodnight has published dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters related to the treatment of OCD, PTSD, and anxiety disorders (see her Research Gate profile here), including articles on applications of technological advancement for exposure-based interventions and the importance of considering intersectional diversity in providing evidence-based care. She has a great deal of in-depth knowledge on how and why psychotherapy works, and she uses that knowledge every day to help her clients get the most out of treatment.

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Dr. Goodnight completed her doctoral degree in clinical psychology at Georgia State University, where she conducted research on anxiety disorders, mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) throughout her graduate training. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Goodnight had already published multiple research studies in the areas of OCD treatment and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders under Dr. Eric Storch, expert in treatment research for OCD. She completed her internship at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, where she received specialized training in cognitive-behavioral treatment of PTSD, borderline personality disorder (BPD), hoarding disorder, and mood disorders, and received extensive experience in full-model DBT and DBT/PE. She went on to complete her postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University under the direction of Dr. Barbara Rothbaum, a world-renowned expert in the treatment of PTSD and anxiety disorders.

 

Dr. Goodnight has attended countless trainings to hone her skills in evidence-based psychotherapy. She is a member of the board of OCD Georgia, and she is a certified consultant in Prolonged Exposure therapy for PTSD through Emory University's PE consultant training program.