Why do people keep doing what they understand they want to change?

As a clinical psychologist, she became interested in the gap between conscious intention and lived behavior: why insight can be meaningful yet insufficient, why shame often strengthens the very patterns people are trying to stop, and why lasting change requires attention to emotion, learning, context, and the unconscious.

Over time, that inquiry expanded beyond the therapy room. Dr. Lavelle built psychology practices, developed modern systems of care, taught psychology, contributed to technology-based approaches to behavior change, and became a trusted media source on the psychological consequences of emerging health and cultural trends.

Dr. Lavelle’s clinical work is grounded in the study of how change actually occurs: how attention, expectation, emotional regulation and unconscious learning shape what people do, and how those mechanisms can be worked with rather than overridden. That foundation runs through her use of clinical hypnosis, her trauma work, and the way she reads emerging research on behavior. ※

She founded and leads NY Health Hypnosis & Integrative Therapy and Soho Integrative EMDR, where she has developed integrative models of psychological care grounded in clinical expertise, ethical systems, and sustainable change.

Her interest is in the conditions around treatment as much as the treatment itself: clinician fit, quality standards, the structure of a course of care, and the ethics of scaling any of it. ※

She also founded Bea, an AI-guided app for emotional eating, and selectively advises mental health technology companies on both operations and the ethics of AI-delivered therapy.

That advisory work is deliberately selective. The questions she is most useful on are the ones without settled answers: where an automated system genuinely extends access, where it manufactures false reassurance, how risk gets screened, and what a company owes a user who is not well. ※

Dr. Lavelle’s public work explores the psychological effects of emerging health and technology trends, including GLP-1 medications, food noise, reward and motivation, emotional eating, body image, artificial intelligence in mental health, hypnosis, trauma, and self-trust.

Her commentary has appeared in outlets including Vox, APA Monitor on Psychology, WebMD, The Cut / New York Magazine, Forbes, ELLE, Oprah Daily, Psych Central, Psychology Today, and The Economic Times.

A concise factual list of degrees, licensure, past teaching, and professional affiliations belongs here. It has been left unwritten rather than approximated, because none of these details have been supplied or independently verified. ※

This site covers Dr. Lavelle’s public and founder work. New-patient enquiries are handled by the intake teams at her practices rather than through this site. ※