Josh Kirby, PhD

I’ve long been interested in the space between what people are capable of and what can keep them from living with greater freedom, connection, and direction.

I see that tension in many forms: an accomplished person whose inner life has not kept pace with outward success; a couple who cares deeply for one another but continues to get caught in the same cycles; a leader carrying decisions and responsibilities that few other people fully see; or someone who is doing well by most measures but senses that some part of life deserves closer attention.

My interest in these questions is partly professional and partly personal. I didn’t follow a straight path into psychology, and for a while I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted my professional life to become. I was interested in people, motivation, creativity, faith, and meaningful work, and it took time for those interests to come together in a way that made sense.

I studied management, earned an MBA, and worked across business, nonprofit, and educational settings. I also played college sports and later coached. My life, work, and time in graduate school have taken me through Nashville, Los Angeles, and Dallas, dynamic and ambitious cities, each with its own culture and rhythm. Along the way, I have been fortunate to build personal and professional relationships with people across business, education, sports, ministry, entertainment and other creative and professional fields.

Those experiences gave me close view not only of what people accomplish, but how the forces underneath and how ambition, success, disappointment, relationships, and change actually unfold. I found myself increasingly curious about the person beneath the role or accomplishment.

That curiosity eventually led me to psychology. I earned master's and doctoral degrees in Psychology. My clinical training took place across academic medical centers, college counseling centers, psychiatry, juvenile justice, and multidisciplinary health-care settings. Working with people in such different settings gave me both a rigorous clinical foundation and a wider view of the many ways people experience themselves, their relationships, and the lives they are trying to build.

For the past decade, much of that work has continued in private practice. Sitting with individuals and couples week after week has given me a different kind of education, one that comes from working with many different people, seeing familiar patterns take different forms, and watching change happen over time.

Today, I’m a partner at Sparrow House Counseling, a large multidisciplinary practice serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area. I maintain an active clinical practice with individuals and couples and help lead the larger organization. Alongside my clinical work, I am developing a more focused advisory and coaching practice, for professionals and organizations who want a thoughtful, psychologically informed place to step back, understand deeper patterns in behavior, leadership, and relationships, and consider the direction they want to go next.

Christian faith has also been central to the way I understand people and my own life. Over time, psychology and faith have become more integrated in the way I think about human nature, relationships, suffering, grace, and change. For those who want faith to be part of our work, I’m comfortable engaging it thoughtfully and directly without reducing difficult psychological or relational questions to easy spiritual answers.

I also enjoy teaching, speaking, and facilitating workshops on many of the themes that have grown out of my work, including relationships, emotional health, leadership and performance, and spiritual formation. I enjoy taking ideas that can become overly clinical or abstract and making them useful in the places people actually live, work, lead, and relate to one another.

I live in Dallas with my wife and our three children. Outside of work, much of my life revolves around family, sports, and finding time for a good book or good conversation amid the the ordinary rhythms of raising three kids. I still enjoy playing in a weekly over-40 basketball league, keeping up with LSU sports, and traveling with my family to favorite places like the Texas Hill Country, Colorado, and back home to Louisiana to spend time with my large extended family.