Dr. Lisa Sperle

Dr. Lisa Sperle is a Licensed Psychologist in BC. If you are experiencing anxiety, worries, perfectionism, thoughts that seem obsessive or intrusive to you, high stress trying to keep up with the demands of your life, low self-confidence, procrastination, or compulsions, these concerns can be confusing, frustrating and overwhelming to navigate. Anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms can make it more difficult to lead a life aligned with your values when you find yourself stuck in habits, avoidance, or compulsive cycles that take up the time and energy you want to spend differently. Would you like to put more care into your physical health, the important people in your life, enjoying activities, or understanding yourself better?

By engaging in therapy backed by research but tailored to your unique goals, needs, and strengths, Lisa offers solutions-focused, empathic, nonjudgmental and action-oriented treatment so clients can lead lives designed by them rather than by anxiety or OCD. Common treatment goals include learning emotion regulation tools, spending more time on what they value or enjoy (rather than worry/anxiety/compulsions), building self-confidence, overcoming fears, tolerating uncertainty or mistakes better, developing more control over OCD symptoms, and empowering parents in ways to understand and support their child. Although Lisa’s specialty areas are OCD and anxiety (including but not limited to generalized anxiety, social anxiety, phobias), these concerns may not occur in isolation. If you are experiencing other mental health concerns like depression or Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), then therapy is flexibly designed to provide research-supported strategies to improve mood, behaviour and healthy living habits. Lisa works with kids, teens, and adults and welcomes clients across diverse backgrounds and identities.

 

The foundations of Lisa’s treatment approach include:

 

(1) Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT involves learning patterns and relationships among thoughts, emotions, and actions. CBT is backed by research in the treatment of various mental health concerns, including anxiety and depression. In anxiety treatment with Lisa, empathic but action-oriented collaboration is emphasized so there are gradual opportunities to practice tolerating discomfort, challenge anxiety’s predictions of what will happen, and overcome fears/anxiety.

(2) Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for OCD treatment. ERP is an important treatment for understanding the OCD cycle and gradually reducing distress with intrusive thoughts and the time spent engaging in compulsions to reduce one’s distress. Lisa is a member of the International OCD Foundation and is dedicated to sharing evidence-based education and interventions like ERP to individuals with obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

(3) Behaviour management skills building for parents of children/teens. This approach involves collaborating with parents on how to build positive parent-child relationships, increase appropriate behaviors (e.g., compliance, being brave rather than avoiding), and address parent-child challenges (e.g., emotion dysregulation due to anxiety, outbursts, defiance).

(4) Other strategies are incorporated based on clients’ unique goals (i.e., Dialectical Behavioural Therapy-informed strategies for distress tolerance and/or interpersonal communication; trauma-informed care principles for individuals to understand the impact of trauma for themselves or their child).

Lisa received a joint doctorate degree in Clinical & Developmental Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh (American Psychological Association-accredited). She completed both her internship training (2017-2018) and postdoctoral fellowship training (2018-2019) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (US) where she received extensive training and supervision in psychological testing and therapy across development. She has previous experience working as a psychologist at a hospital (outpatient behavioral health clinic of Nationwide Children’s Hospital) and held a dual appointment as a Clinical Assistant Professor in The Ohio State University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health. In addition to her responsibilities providing therapy and testing services, Lisa facilitated clinical consultation groups for behavioural health staff focused on OCD assessment/treatment, co-led trainings on exposure-based treatments for anxiety disorders and OCD, engaged in program development for caregivers of children with anxiety disorders, provided clinical supervision to psychology interns and fellows, and served as a subject matter expert on OCD as part of the hospital’s “On Our Sleeves” mental health initiative. She has also been a licensed psychologist in Ohio, United States (#7906) from 2019-2026.