Interview with psychologist Dr. Connie McReynolds
For more than 35 years, Dr. Connie McReynolds has dedicated her life to understanding the barriers that stop people from reaching their full potential and finding innovative ways to help them overcome them.
She is a licensed psychologist, rehabilitation counselor, researcher, author, and founder of Morningstar Educational and Psychological Services based in California. Dr. McReynolds has built a career around uncovering the root causes behind challenges often labelled as ADHD, anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD, learning difficulties, behavioural disorders, and emotional dysregulation.
What makes Morningstar different is that she doesn’t start with the label but focuses on discovering the underlying causes driving the symptoms, helping children, adults, veterans, and families find answers many have spent years searching for.
Alongside her clinical work, Dr. McReynolds has become an international voice in the conversation around ADHD, neurofeedback, and psychological wellbeing. She has appeared on more than 70 podcasts around the world, presented at conferences, published articles, appeared on regional news programmes, and authored the book Solving the ADHD Riddle. In this interview, she shares the story behind her mission-led business, the lessons learned from decades of helping others, and why she believes hope and solutions exist for far more people than we realise.
What’s your career background?
My career spans 35 years across rehabilitation counseling and rehabilitation psychology. I began as a rehabilitation counselor for a state agency in the Midwest, working directly with individuals with disabilities for seven years before pursuing my doctorate in rehabilitation psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From there, I joined the faculty at Kent State University, where I taught in the rehabilitation counseling master’s program for a decade.
I was then recruited to California State University, San Bernardino, where I built an assessment center from the ground up and expanded it into a full research institute. We provided vocational rehabilitation assessments for agencies across the southern half of California, and I also developed and directed a neurofeedback clinic that operated across two campuses, serving clients ranging in age from three to ninety.
After 15 years there, I retired from the university and incorporated Morningstar Educational and Psychological Services to continue my neurofeedback and assessment work in private practice. I have been a licensed psychologist for over 25 years, and the through-line across all of it has been a commitment to understanding the barriers people face and mitigating them through innovative approaches that get to the root of the problem, rather than getting stuck in the labels.
Where did the idea for your business come from?
The idea grew directly out of everything I had been doing for 35 years. Early in my career as a rehabilitation counselor, I learned quickly that a diagnosis told you very little about the actual person sitting in front of you. What mattered was understanding how they were affected and then finding the workaround.
That philosophy drove everything. We were engineering ramps, modifying kitchens and bathrooms, building functional solutions well before the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) came along and standardized those accommodations. Innovative, practical, outside-the-box thinking was simply how we operated.
When I retired from the university, I wanted to continue that work with more freedom to build and grow it. Private practice gave me the ability to take the neurofeedback and assessment work further than an institutional setting allowed. And the more I developed this discovery process, the clearer it became that so many of the conditions people struggle with, ADHD, learning difficulties, behavioral challenges, have a root cause that is going undetected. Auditory and visual processing problems are driving so much of what gets labeled, medicated, and written off as permanent.
The mission of Morningstar is to get to that root cause and help people understand that solutions exist, even when they have been told there aren’t any. That includes children sitting in special education classrooms who may not need to be there, school districts spending enormous resources without results, and families who have been carrying a diagnosis for years without real answers. In so many of these cases, auditory and visual processing problems can be mitigated right in the classroom through reasonable accommodations, and in many cases resolved entirely through neurofeedback.
How did you move from idea to actual business?
In many ways, the groundwork had already been laid. By the time I retired from the university, I had spent roughly 12 years running the neurofeedback clinic and had built a solid reputation throughout the region working with children and adults of all ages. The proof of concept was not theoretical; it was documented in the outcomes of the people we had served.
Moving from idea to actual business was really a matter of logistics. I secured startup funding through a small business loan to purchase the equipment, found the right locations, and hired staff. The clinical processes, the assessment framework, and the neurofeedback protocols, were already in place. I essentially converted what I had built at the university into my own company. Morningstar was the natural next chapter, not a leap into the unknown.
What’s your USP?
No one else is doing what we do, and that is not a marketing claim. It is the result of decades of clinical work, research, and innovation that I have built into a proprietary system from the ground up.
Most people who come to us are struggling with ADHD, anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD, learning difficulties, behavioral disorders, or emotional dysregulation. What makes Morningstar different is that we do not start with the label. We start with a discovery process that uncovers the underlying root cause of what is showing up on the surface.
That process is built on a standardized assessment that I have enhanced with my own custom data analysis software, my own scoring mechanism, and an integrated set of recommendations that are age-bracketed and specific to each individual’s profile. We are looking at 37 markers, including auditory and visual processing, memory, conceptualization, and sequencing, and pulling all of that together into a picture that no single standardized tool can produce on its own.
From that intake report alone, a client walks away with concrete, actionable recommendations they can begin implementing immediately. Then, when neurofeedback is coupled with that as the brain training component, we are able to document measurable reductions in the very symptoms people came in with. Progress is tracked through standardized reassessment, so the outcomes are not anecdotal. They are evidence-based and data-driven.
That combination, proprietary assessment, custom software, targeted neurofeedback, and documented outcomes, is what sets Morningstar apart. We get beneath the diagnosis and find the resolution.
Who’s your target audience?
Our target audience is broader than most people expect. We have worked with clients from age three to ninety, and every decade in between. Anyone who is living with struggles that are getting in the way of the life they deserve to be living is a candidate for what we do.
That includes children who are bright but frustrated in school, adults managing anxiety, trauma, or attention challenges, veterans navigating the aftermath of service, and seniors experiencing cognitive changes. The common thread is not a specific diagnosis. It is the experience of knowing something is getting in the way and not having the answers to explain it.
The discovery process itself is two hours, computer-based, and highly specific to the individual. The report that comes out of it is detailed, actionable, and unlike anything most people have seen before. Time and again, clients tell us it is the first time they have ever felt truly understood.
Parents of struggling children often break down during the feedback session, not from grief, but from relief. They always knew their child was smart. They watched them work hard and still fall short, facing testing processes that measured what the child could not demonstrate rather than what they actually knew. Walking out of that session, something shifts. People come in carrying the weight of years of frustration and self-doubt, and they leave standing taller, smiling, with a sense of competence and hope that many of them have never felt before.
Everyone deserves that moment.
How do you spread the word about what you do?
For the first 15 years, the most powerful marketing we had was word of mouth, and it still is. Parents who brought their children through the discovery process told other parents. Families who went through neurofeedback and saw the results became living proof that this works, and they carried that into their communities without any prompting from us. That kind of advocacy cannot be manufactured. It simply grows from doing the work well.
But my goal has always been to reach beyond this region, and that has required a different kind of effort. I have done more than 70 podcasts around the world, published articles, written my book Solving the ADHD Riddle, presented at conferences, and appeared on regional news programs. I also work with a publicist who continues to grow my media presence and position this work in front of broader audiences.
What makes the expansion possible is that the discovery process can be delivered through telehealth, which means we have worked with clients across the country and in other parts of the world who simply wanted answers about what was going on with themselves or their child.
What’s been your most successful marketing strategy?
It depends on the level. Locally, without question, it has been word of mouth. When the work produces the results it does, people talk, and that has been the foundation from the beginning.
At the national and global level, it has been podcasts. More than 70 appearances around the world have introduced this work to people who would never have found it otherwise, and a number of our clients from across the country and internationally first heard about what we do through one of those conversations.
Solving the ADHD Riddle has also served as a calling card in its own right. It gives parents and teachers a much deeper understanding of what their child is actually struggling with and what they can do to support them. It is filled with practical tips, IEP suggestions, and a clear explanation of the underlying causes of so many of the behaviors that parents and teachers see in these children every day. For many families, the book is their first introduction to this work, and it opens the door to everything else.
What’s been the biggest obstacle you’ve had to overcome?
Honestly, the same obstacles most solopreneurs face. The startup phase brings real expenses, growing pains, and the challenge of building systems and consistency from the ground up. When you are the clinician, the creator, the decision-maker, and the visionary all at once, the work has a way of expanding to fill every available hour.
The bigger challenge for me personally has been knowing when to step back. I am a naturally creative person. I enjoy building, whether that is developing new assessment tools, designing product lines, writing, or creating content. There is always something that could be done, and the discipline of protecting time for rest and renewal is something every passionate solopreneur has to learn.
And your proudest moment so far?
Publishing Solving the ADHD Riddle was a significant milestone. It took years of work to bring together, and the fact that it still resonates just as strongly three years later, with nothing I would change, is something I am genuinely proud of.
But even that is hard to place above what I witness in the clinic. The proudest moments are the ones that cannot be put on a shelf. They are the children who are succeeding in school after years of struggle. The adults carrying less worry, less stress, and less weight from trauma. The veterans whose PTSD and depression symptoms are resolving and who are finding their way back to themselves. The families with less friction, more connection, more hope.
Those moments happen regularly, and they never get old. That is what this work is for.
Why is work so important to you?
Because it is my mission and my purpose. It is why I get up in the morning, why I work on
weekends, and why it is sometimes hard to shut my brain off because another idea has arrived that cannot wait.
What strikes me most is that after 35 years, it still feels like the beginning. Every January 1st for the past 15 years has felt like I am just getting started, like the work is still unfolding and the best of it is still ahead. That kind of energy does not come from a job. It comes from a calling.
The world is waiting for this information. The stress, the trauma, the frustration, the years of failure that so many people carry, these are not permanent conditions. There are solutions, and we offer hope to those who oftentimes don’t know where to look or what to do.
Who inspires you?
Not the celebrities or the people with massive platforms and endless accolades. The people who inspire me are the ones who just keep going through their daily lives one step at a time.
The mother who has fought for her struggling child through every school year, every meeting, every disappointing evaluation, who is weary to her core but has never stopped looking for answers. The adult who has carried a label for decades and still gets up every morning and tries. The veteran who is quietly working through pain that most people will never understand.
These are the people who move me. Their persistence in the face of real struggle is something no achievement award can touch. And being part of the solution to what they are living with is the greatest privilege of this work.
How do you balance your work with your personal life?
I will reframe this slightly, because balance for me is really about protecting personal time rather than separating work from family in a traditional sense.
To be honest, it is not always easy. When you are passionate about what you do and there is always something more that could be built or written or created, the boundaries can blur. What keeps me grounded is a non-negotiable morning routine. I am up by 5:30, and those first few hours belong entirely to me. I read, I exercise, I have a quiet cup of tea. I meditate and take time to simply be still before the day begins. That happens without exception, even on weekends when I might spend hours later writing or editing or pulling something new together.
That morning time is the anchor. It is what makes everything else sustainable.
What are your three top pieces of advice for someone wanting to do something similar?
First, find the burning drive in your soul. You have to want to get up every day and face the challenges, whether that means running a business, navigating bureaucratic systems, or pushing forward on days when the forces around you do not match your intention or your desire to help.
Second, be innovative and stay creative. The work will always ask more of you than you expect, and the willingness to think differently, to keep building and finding new solutions, is what sustains you through it.
Third, love, absolutely love what you do, and anchor that love in a clear sense of purpose and mission. Even if I were a billionaire, I would still be doing exactly what I am doing today. When you have that kind of passion and drive and you hold those values high, things just seem to come into place.
It is a way of being, walking through life with a career that you love, work that you cherish, and a mission that you would not stop doing for anything else in the world.
