Therapist Insights / Therapy Types
Vagus nerve regulation for high-stakes leaders: the stress response does not answer to willpower.
Every senior leader has been told to breathe. Almost none have been told what the breathing is supposed to be doing, which part of that claim is measurable, and which part was attached to it by a company selling a device. What follows separates the anatomy from the marketing and says plainly where the line runs.
THE QUICK TAKEAWAY
Vagus nerve regulation names a set of skills that change autonomic state through breath, posture and attention, and it is not a treatment for a psychiatric condition. Heart rate variability is a validated index of cardiac vagal tone, and slow breathing at under ten breaths a minute produces measurable autonomic change. Implanted vagus nerve stimulation is a regulated Class III medical device approved for named indications, and it has almost nothing in common with the exercises sold under a similar name. CEREVITY clinicians teach these skills to executives and senior leaders alongside evidence-based therapy, never as a substitute for it.
§01 / 09 / Definition
What the vagus nerve actually does.
Vagus nerve function is parasympathetic and largely involuntary: the tenth cranial nerve carries motor and sensory fibers to and from the heart, lungs and esophagus, and its cardiac branch slows the heart. Executives and senior leaders cannot contract a cranial nerve on command, which is why regulation works indirectly, through breath, posture and attention.
Search the phrase and you will find one nerve credited with more than any single nerve has ever been asked to do. The anatomy is less dramatic and considerably more useful. The vagus is the tenth cranial nerve, and the StatPearls clinical reference describes it as containing both motor and sensory functions in afferent and efferent regards, with general visceral efferent fibers originating in the dorsal motor nucleus and providing involuntary muscle control of the organs it innervates, the cardiac, pulmonary and esophageal among them. Its superior cardiac nerve is associated with parasympathetic fibers and travels to the heart. That is the whole of the mechanism people are being sold: a nerve that, when it is active, slows the heart, and when it withdraws, lets the heart run free. Nobody flexes a cranial nerve. What a leader can influence is the input, which is why every credible technique in this space works on breathing rate, on exhale length, on posture and on where attention is pointed, and never on the nerve itself. That indirect route is the entire subject of this article, and it is far narrower than the industry built on top of it.
Five claims attached to this nerve, sorted by what holds them up
The anatomy claim
Solid. The vagus carries parasympathetic fibers to the heart and involuntary control to the viscera, and it runs in both directions, sensing as well as signaling. Nothing controversial sits here. Almost every dubious claim further down the list borrows its credibility from this one.
The measurement claim
Solid, with conditions. Heart rate variability indexes cardiac vagal tone, and the methodological literature names RMSSD and high-frequency HRV as the indices that reflect it. The same literature warns against the LF/HF ratio, whose physiological underpinning it calls unclear, which is exactly the number most consumer wearables display.
The breathing claim
Supported. A systematic review of slow breathing, defined as fewer than ten breaths a minute, found that these techniques promote autonomic changes increasing heart rate variability and respiratory sinus arrhythmia, with reported reductions in symptoms of arousal, anxiety and anger. Fifteen studies is a real but modest body of work.
The device claim
Split in two, and the split matters more than anything else on this page. Implanted stimulation is a regulated medical device with named indications. Ear clips, wearables and app-paired stimulators are a separate category with early, heterogeneous and contested evidence, and they are routinely marketed as though the first category's approval covers them.
The treatment claim
Not supported as stated. The idea that toning the vagus nerve treats anxiety or depression runs past what has been demonstrated. Regulation skills change state, and changing state is genuinely useful, but a change in state is not a course of treatment for a diagnosed condition and should never be sold to executives and senior leaders as one.
▶ Research
The single most important distinction on this page is the one the wellness market works hardest to blur. Implanted vagus nerve stimulation is a surgically placed Class III device, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under premarket approval P970003 in 1997, with a generator, a lead attached to the left vagus nerve, named indications and a regulatory file. Transcutaneous ear devices, clip-on stimulators, cold plunges, humming protocols and supplement stacks are not that, do not carry that approval, and in several cases do not carry any approval at all. When a product page cites the fact that vagus nerve stimulation is approved to treat epilepsy and depression, it is borrowing the credibility of an implanted medical device to sell something that is not one. A leader who understands only that distinction has understood the useful part of this topic.1
Where the claim outruns the evidence
Consumer and transcutaneous stimulation is early, not settled
A 2026 review in Frontiers in Psychiatry on transcutaneous auricular stimulation for major depressive disorder states that clinical translation is hindered by methodological heterogeneity, small sample sizes, and a lack of long-term follow-up data. It also flags a problem specific to the method: recent anatomical evidence suggests that even non-vagal ear regions might transmit minor signals via the great auricular nerve, potentially diluting the effect size difference between active and sham groups. When the sham condition may itself be doing something, early positive results get harder to interpret rather than easier.
Toning the vagus is not a treatment for a diagnosis
No credible source recommends breathing exercises as monotherapy for an anxiety disorder or a depressive disorder. The honest framing is that regulation skills change physiological state within minutes and make other work possible, and that the conditions themselves have tested treatments with their own literature. Where sustained low mood or anxiety sits underneath the performance, the work belongs in therapy for the worry that runs underneath everything rather than in a breathing protocol.
The wrist number is not the research measure
Consumer wearables report heart rate variability using proprietary pipelines, mixed indices and uncontrolled recording conditions, then present a daily score as though it were a verdict on the user. The research construct requires a specified index, a specified window and controlled conditions. Watching a nightly score fall after a week of board preparation is not a finding, and for a certain kind of leader it becomes one more metric to fail at.
Three separate things collapsed into one phrase
Most of the confusion in this topic comes from a single word doing three jobs. Popular writing uses vagus to mean a nerve, a branch of the autonomic nervous system, and a number on a wrist tracker, and then moves conclusions freely between them. Pulling them apart makes the rest of the article straightforward, and it is the first thing a clinician does when a leader arrives with a printout.
The nerve
A specific anatomical structure with a defined origin, course and territory, carrying both efferent fibers that act on organs and afferent fibers that report back from them. It is not a dial, a switch, or a muscle group. It cannot be toned in the sense that a quadriceps can be toned, and any instruction phrased that way is a metaphor being sold as physiology.
The branch
Parasympathetic function is the wider system the nerve serves, the side of the autonomic nervous system associated with recovery rather than mobilization. When people describe getting into a calmer state, this is the level they are actually talking about, and it responds to breathing rate, posture and safety cues rather than to instruction.
The number
Heart rate variability is a measurement, not a state and not a virtue. It indexes cardiac vagal tone well when the right index is used and the recording conditions are controlled. A figure produced overnight by a consumer ring, compared against yesterday, is a much weaker object than the same construct measured under a protocol, and treating the two as equivalent is where most self-tracking goes wrong.
§02 / 09 / Telehealth
What the evidence supports and what it does not.
Evidence in this field is real at the physiological end and thin at the therapeutic end. Heart rate variability is a validated index of cardiac vagal tone and slow breathing measurably changes autonomic activity, while consumer stimulation devices and the claim that vagal toning treats high-functioning anxiety remain unproven for executives or anyone else.
Heart rate variability is a validated index of vagal tone
The methodological reference point here is a 2017 paper in Frontiers in Psychology by Laborde, Mosley and Thayer, written to standardize how the measure is used in psychophysiological research. It states that heart rate variability is able to index cardiac vagal tone, identifies RMSSD and high-frequency HRV as the indices that reflect clearly identified physiological systems, and cautions against the LF/HF ratio on the grounds that its physiological underpinning is unclear. That paper exists because the measure was being used loosely, which tells you something about how carefully to read any claim built on it.
Slow breathing produces measurable autonomic change
A 2018 systematic review in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience screened 2,461 abstracts and included fifteen studies of slow breathing, defined throughout as fewer than ten breaths a minute. Its conclusion is that slow breathing techniques promote autonomic changes increasing heart rate variability and respiratory sinus arrhythmia, alongside an increase in EEG alpha and a decrease in theta power. Reported psychological effects included increased comfort, relaxation and alertness, and reduced symptoms of arousal, anxiety, depression, anger and confusion. That is a genuine finding on a small literature.
Implanted stimulation is a regulated medical therapy
The VNS Therapy System holds premarket approval P970003 from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, granted on 16 July 1997, under the generic name stimulator, autonomic nerve, implanted for epilepsy, and classified as a Class III device that supports or sustains human life. The StatPearls entry records that vagus nerve stimulation is approved to treat epilepsy and depression and describes the procedure, in which electrical wires connect to the left vagus nerve. Surgery, a generator and a named indication. Nothing about that resembles a breathing exercise.
§03 / 09 / Mechanism
Why calm down fails as an instruction.
Calm down asks the deliberate part of the mind to issue an order to a system that does not take orders. Executives and senior leaders can change breathing rate, exhale length, posture and where attention is pointed, and autonomic state follows from those inputs rather than from the decision to be calm.
The instruction fails for a structural reason rather than a motivational one. Vagal control of the heart is efferent output from the brainstem, not a voluntary motor command, and the parts of the system a person can operate directly are few: the rate and depth of breathing, the length of the exhale relative to the inhale, posture, gaze, and the object of attention. Everything else is downstream. A leader who has been told a hundred times to relax before a difficult conversation has been handed an outcome and no mechanism, and the reliable result is that they add self-criticism to arousal. This is why the sentence lands as an insult even when it is meant kindly.
What a clinician teaches instead is a set of inputs with a known effect. Extended exhalation is the workhorse, because a longer exhale relative to the inhale is associated with the vagal side of the cycle, and because the reviewed slow breathing literature sits at fewer than ten breaths a minute. Orienting is the second: deliberately looking around the actual room, naming what is physically present, which interrupts the loop between anticipated catastrophe and the physiological preparation for it. Interoceptive awareness is the third and the slowest to build, because it asks a person who has spent twenty years overriding bodily signals to start noticing them early enough to act, rather than at the point where the signal has already become a symptom.
There is a version of this that goes wrong, and it is common in this population. A leader learns the techniques, applies them with the same intensity they apply to everything, and turns regulation into another performance metric. The exhale becomes a target, the wrist number becomes a scoreboard, and a skill meant to lower arousal becomes a fresh source of it. The corrective is to hold the techniques loosely and to be specific about what they are for. They buy a person a window, and the window is what makes a difficult conversation, a piece of therapeutic work, or an honest thought possible. Where a leader has been running on nothing for a long time, the underlying question is not breathing at all, and the more useful place to look is why burnout in leadership rarely looks like collapse.
► Standard advice vs. CEREVITY's approach
Standard therapy
"Tell yourself to calm down before the room fills"
CEREVITY
"Change the inputs you can actually operate: exhale length, posture, and where you are looking"
Standard therapy
"Track the overnight score and treat a bad night as a verdict"
CEREVITY
"Use the measure as one signal among several, and know which index it is reporting"
Standard therapy
"Buy the device that borrows an implanted therapy's approval"
CEREVITY
"Read what the device is actually cleared or approved for, and for which indication"
| Standard insurance-based therapy | CEREVITY's specialized approach |
|---|---|
| "Tell yourself to calm down before the room fills" | "Change the inputs you can actually operate: exhale length, posture, and where you are looking" |
| "Track the overnight score and treat a bad night as a verdict" | "Use the measure as one signal among several, and know which index it is reporting" |
| "Buy the device that borrows an implanted therapy's approval" | "Read what the device is actually cleared or approved for, and for which indication" |
A break from the page
The state changes first. The thinking follows.
A first inquiry is confidential and commits you to nothing. CEREVITY is a nationwide network of independent licensed clinicians working private-pay, with no insurance claim submitted and no diagnosis on a payer record. For leaders who have nowhere to say any of this out loud, that begins as a confidential room outside the org chart. To take the first step, start with a private inquiry.
§04 / 09 / Cases
Common challenges we address.
The leader who has already bought the device
The patternSomeone arrives having spent four figures on a stimulator, a ring and a subscription, with a spreadsheet of nightly readings and a sincere belief that the numbers are moving in the wrong direction because of a personal failure. The equipment is real, the readings are noisy, and the interpretation has become the problem.
What we addressThe work starts by separating the three things the word vagus is doing in their spreadsheet, then asking what changed in the life rather than in the readout. Frequently what surfaces is a standard of self-assessment applied to a physiological measure, which is the same standard already operating elsewhere, and that pattern is closer to imposter feelings in accomplished people than to anything autonomic.
The leader whose body announces it first
The patternA senior executive whose performance is intact and whose physiology is not: the heart rate before a board meeting, the hands, the sleep that stops four hours in, the nausea on the way to an earnings call. Nothing has been missed at work. The reasoning is excellent. The body is simply arriving at the conclusion earlier and louder than the analysis does.
What we addressRegulation skills matter here, and they are the opening move rather than the treatment. What follows is an assessment of what the arousal is tracking, whether that is anticipatory dread about a specific recurring situation, a longer pattern of anxiety that has always been managed by working harder, or exhaustion that has stopped responding to time off. The skills make the room usable. The treatment is what happens in the room.
§05 / 09 / Methods
Evidence-based treatment approaches.
Five things get taught under the heading of vagus nerve regulation: paced breathing with an extended exhale, orienting and grounding, interoceptive awareness, heart rate variability biofeedback, and, in an entirely separate category, implanted stimulation as a medical device. Executives and senior leaders should know that only the last of those is a regulated therapy.
Paced breathing with an extended exhale
The most studied of the group. A rate under ten breaths a minute, with the exhale longer than the inhale, produces measurable autonomic change including increased heart rate variability and respiratory sinus arrhythmia, according to a 2018 systematic review of fifteen studies. In session it is taught as a specific count rather than as advice to breathe deeply, because depth without pacing frequently makes arousal worse. Usable in a car, a stairwell, or the sixty seconds after sitting down at a table.
Orienting and grounding
Deliberately moving attention out of anticipated future events and into the physical room: what is present, where the exits are, what the temperature is, what is under your feet. It is unglamorous and it interrupts a loop. Nobody claims a specific autonomic effect size for it, and it is taught because it reliably gives a person something to do with attention that is not rehearsing the worst version of the next hour.
Interoceptive awareness
Training the ability to notice internal signals accurately and early. For leaders who have spent a career treating fatigue, hunger and fear as noise to be overridden, this is the slowest skill to build and often the one that changes the most, because it moves the point of intervention from the crisis to the hour before it. It is also where the work stops being a technique and starts being therapy.
Heart rate variability biofeedback
Paced breathing done with a live readout, so the person can see the effect of the input they are changing. The construct being displayed is well founded, and the specific index matters: RMSSD and high-frequency HRV reflect identified physiological systems, while the LF/HF ratio has an unclear physiological underpinning by the methodological literature's own account. Useful for people who need to see a mechanism before they will trust it, and counterproductive for people who will convert any number into a performance target.
Implanted vagus nerve stimulation, which belongs in a different category
Included here only to keep it out of the list above. The VNS Therapy System is a Class III device approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under premarket approval P970003 in 1997, involving surgical implantation of a generator and a lead on the left vagus nerve, and stimulation is approved for epilepsy and depression. It is prescribed and implanted by physicians for specific indications, is not a wellness technique, and has nothing to do with the exercises above beyond a shared anatomical noun.
§06 / 09 / Investment
Understanding the investment in private-pay care.
Private-pay access, session depth and how the skills fit into care
At CEREVITY, our online individual therapy sessions are structured as a direct investment in your mental agility and overall well-being. The investment includes:
- Licensed mental health professional specializing in nervous system regulation for people who work under scrutiny
- Evidence-based, one-on-one approaches proven effective for anxiety, physiological arousal, and stress that does not respond to reasoning
- Flexible online scheduling including evenings and weekends
- Complete privacy with no insurance involvement or red tape
- Executives and senior leaders expertise and understanding
- Outcome tracking and progress measurement
The cost of vagus nerve regulation going unaddressed
Consider what is at stake when vagus nerve regulation goes unaddressed:
What private-pay changes here
Working outside of insurance means no diagnosis on a claim record, no payer deciding whether care continues, and no benefit design narrowing what a clinician is permitted to spend a session on. For a senior leader whose concern is that anything written down travels, that matters more than it does for most people, and it is frequently the reason the conversation happens at all. View our current rates here: cerevity.com/our-pricing-for-therapy/.
Session formats that fit this kind of work
Care is delivered by secure telehealth nationwide across all 50 states. Skills like paced breathing and orienting are taught quickly and rehearsed across a run of 50-minute sessions, because repetition under ordinary conditions is what makes them available under difficult ones. Work that goes underneath the arousal, at what it is tracking and what it is protecting, usually needs more room in a sitting and is better served by 90-minute sessions. For leaders whose calendars make a weekly slot unreliable, it is worth understanding what a 3-hour intensive is designed to do before assuming the schedule rules care out. Practical questions about scheduling, confidentiality and records are covered in the things people usually ask on a first call.
§07 / 09 / Evidence
What the research shows.
The defensible summary is short. Vagal parasympathetic function is well described anatomically, and the StatPearls reference for the tenth cranial nerve sets out its efferent and afferent composition and its cardiac branch. Heart rate variability indexes cardiac vagal tone, and the 2017 methodological paper by Laborde, Mosley and Thayer in Frontiers in Psychology names RMSSD and high-frequency HRV as the indices to use while warning that the LF/HF ratio has an unclear physiological underpinning. Slow breathing at fewer than ten breaths a minute produces autonomic change, on a systematic review of fifteen studies drawn from 2,461 screened abstracts, with reported reductions in symptoms of arousal, anxiety, depression, anger and confusion. Implanted vagus nerve stimulation is a Class III medical device with a premarket approval file dating to 1997 and named indications in epilepsy and depression.
► What the fetched sources actually report
studies met inclusion criteria in a systematic review of slow breathing, screened from 2,461 abstracts.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2018
breaths per minute is the rate at which those studies defined slow breathing.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2018
is the year the implanted VNS Therapy System received FDA premarket approval as a Class III device.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, PMA P970003
What does not follow from any of that is the claim the market makes. Transcutaneous and consumer stimulation remains early: a 2026 review in Frontiers in Psychiatry describes clinical translation as hindered by methodological heterogeneity, small sample sizes and a lack of long-term follow-up data, and raises the possibility that even non-vagal ear sites transmit signal, which undermines the sham comparisons the field depends on. No body of evidence supports the proposition that toning the vagus nerve treats an anxiety disorder or a depressive disorder, and no responsible clinician offers it in place of a tested treatment. Ice baths, humming protocols and supplement stacks marketed on this vocabulary sit further out again, with the approval of an implanted device doing rhetorical work it has no business doing. Regulation skills are worth teaching, and they are worth describing accurately: they change state, they make other work possible, and that is where the claim stops.
§§ / 09 / Recap
Key takeaways.
Five things to remember
- Separate the nerve, the branch and the number One word is doing three jobs in almost everything written about this topic. The anatomy is solid, the parasympathetic branch is what techniques actually influence, and heart rate variability is a measurement with conditions attached. Conclusions that slide between the three are where the misinformation lives.
- Implanted stimulation and wellness techniques are not the same category A Class III device approved in 1997 for epilepsy, with a generator and a lead on the left vagus nerve, is not the ancestor of an ear clip or a cold plunge. Any product borrowing that approval to sell something else has told you what its own evidence looks like.
- Slow breathing is supported and modest Fewer than ten breaths a minute, with a longer exhale, measurably changes autonomic activity and reported arousal on a review of fifteen studies. That is a real effect on a small literature, and it is a skill rather than a cure.
- Skills sit beside treatment, not in front of it Regulation techniques buy a window. Anxiety disorders and depressive disorders have tested treatments with their own evidence, and the sensible arrangement is skills for the state and therapy for the condition, delivered by the same clinician who knows which is which.
- CEREVITY provides this through online individual therapy nationwide, with full privacy through its private-pay concierge network and no insurance involvement.
§08 / 09 / FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
What is vagus nerve regulation?
Vagus nerve regulation is an informal umbrella term for skills that shift autonomic state, most commonly slow breathing with a lengthened exhale, orienting attention to the physical room, and building the ability to notice bodily signals early. None of it acts on the nerve directly, because the vagus is not under voluntary control. What sits underneath the term is parasympathetic function and its measurable proxy, heart rate variability. Executives and senior leaders are usually taught these skills to change what happens in the twenty minutes before a hard meeting, not as a treatment for high-functioning anxiety. CEREVITY clinicians treat them as one component of care alongside evidence-based psychotherapy.
Does vagus nerve stimulation work for anxiety?
Vagus nerve stimulation covers two very different things, and the honest answer depends on which is meant. Implanted stimulation is a regulated Class III medical device approved for epilepsy and depression, and it is not offered as an anxiety treatment on that basis. Transcutaneous ear devices and consumer stimulators are a separate category: a 2026 review in Frontiers in Psychiatry describes the evidence as hindered by methodological heterogeneity, small sample sizes and a lack of long-term follow-up data, and notes that even non-vagal ear regions may transmit signal, which weakens the sham comparisons the trials rely on. Executives asking this question usually want to know whether a device replaces therapy. On current evidence, no.
What are vagus nerve regulation exercises?
Regulation exercises taught in a clinical setting are narrower than the versions circulating online. Paced breathing at fewer than ten breaths a minute with the exhale longer than the inhale is the most studied, and a 2018 systematic review of fifteen studies found that slow breathing increases heart rate variability and respiratory sinus arrhythmia. Orienting, which means deliberately taking in the actual room, and interoceptive awareness, which means noticing internal signals before they become symptoms, make up most of the rest. Humming, gargling, ice baths and supplement protocols are widely promoted and thinly supported, and CEREVITY clinicians do not present them to leaders as though they were.
Do vagus nerve stimulation devices work at home?
Home stimulation devices are not the same product as the implanted system that carries an approval, and that difference is usually obscured in the marketing. The implanted VNS Therapy System holds a premarket approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration dating to 1997 and is surgically placed on the left vagus nerve. Ear clips and wearable stimulators sold directly to consumers sit in a separate evidence base that published reviews describe as heterogeneous, small and short in follow-up. Executives and senior leaders considering one should read what the specific product is cleared or approved for, and for which indication, rather than what the category page implies.
Is vagus nerve stimulation used for depression?
Vagus nerve stimulation is approved to treat epilepsy and depression, according to the StatPearls clinical reference for the tenth cranial nerve, and the procedure it describes involves surgical implantation with electrical wires connected to the left vagus nerve. That is a physician-prescribed device therapy for specific patients, generally where other treatments have not worked, and it is decided in a medical setting rather than chosen from a website. Nothing about that approval extends to breathing exercises, cold exposure or consumer stimulators. CEREVITY clinicians treat depression with evidence-based psychotherapy and coordinate with prescribers where medication or device treatment is part of the picture.
Does the vagus nerve control heart rate?
Vagal fibers slow the heart, and that is the clearest single fact in this topic. The StatPearls reference describes the superior cardiac nerve as associated with parasympathetic fibers travelling to the heart, and the beat-to-beat variation this produces is what heart rate variability measures. The 2017 methodological paper by Laborde, Mosley and Thayer in Frontiers in Psychology states that heart rate variability is able to index cardiac vagal tone and recommends RMSSD and high-frequency HRV as the indices to use, while cautioning that the LF/HF ratio has an unclear physiological underpinning. Control is the wrong word, though, and it matters for executives and senior leaders trying to use this: the influence is real, continuous and not under voluntary command.
What can I actually do in the ninety seconds before a board meeting?
Ninety seconds is enough for three things and not enough for a fourth. Lengthen the exhale and slow the rate, aiming under ten breaths a minute rather than breathing deeply, since depth without pacing often makes arousal worse. Look around the actual room and name what is physically in it, which interrupts the rehearsal of the worst version of the next hour. Put both feet on the floor and let the shoulders drop, because posture is an input you can operate. What ninety seconds will not do is resolve what the arousal is about, and for many executives and senior leaders that is the part worth taking somewhere.
How does your private-pay pricing structure work?
As a private-pay concierge network, we offer structured investments in your mental health without the restrictions or privacy risks of insurance. You can review our full fee schedule and specific session lengths directly on our website. While this costs more than insurance copays, it provides the flexibility, total privacy, and highly specialized care that standard options cannot offer. View our current rates here.
How do you protect my privacy?
Privacy is foundational to our network. As a private-pay network, your sessions never appear on insurance records or EOBs that could be seen by employers, boards, or family members. We use HIPAA-compliant nationwide telehealth platforms, and you can attend sessions from anywhere with a private internet connection.
§09 / 09 / Begin
The nervous system is not persuaded by an argument.
If reasoning with yourself has stopped working before the meetings that matter, the problem is not a shortage of willpower. CEREVITY is a nationwide network of independent licensed clinicians providing confidential, private-pay care across all 50 states. Call (562) 295-6650 or send a private inquiry.
Available by appointment 7 days a week, 8 AM to 8 PM (PST)§§ / Author
About Trevor Grossman, PhD.
Trevor Grossman, PhD
Dr. Grossman is a Licensed Psychologist with more than 15 years of clinical experience working with entrepreneurs, founders, senior executives, and high-responsibility professionals navigating burnout, anxiety, and depression. His work integrates cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, behavioral activation, and schema-informed approaches calibrated to the working week his clients are actually living in. He sees clients via CEREVITY's nationwide telehealth network. View full bio →
§§ / Sources
References.
- StatPearls Publishing, National Center for Biotechnology Information. Neuroanatomy, Cranial Nerve 10 (Vagus Nerve). 2022. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Frontiers in Psychology. Heart Rate Variability and Cardiac Vagal Tone in Psychophysiological Research: Recommendations for Experiment Planning, Data Analysis, and Data Reporting. 2017. frontiersin.org
- Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing. 2018. frontiersin.org
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Premarket Approval (PMA) Database Record P970003: VNS Therapy System, LivaNova USA, Inc.. 1997. accessdata.fda.gov
- Frontiers in Psychiatry. Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation for major depressive disorder: current evidence and future research directions. 2026. frontiersin.org
- CEREVITY. Executive burnout therapy. cerevity.com/executive-burnout-therapy
- CEREVITY. High-functioning anxiety and depression therapy. cerevity.com/anxiety-and-depression-therapy
- CEREVITY. Leadership isolation therapy. cerevity.com/leadership-isolation-therapy
⚠ Crisis resources
If you are experiencing a mental health crisis or having thoughts of suicide, please reach out immediately. 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline · Call or text 988 Crisis Text Line · Text HOME to 741741 National Alliance on Mental Illness · 1-800-950-NAMI (6264)
