Mission
The Gardiner Center for Stress Management was created with the vision of becoming a resource for those in search of greater balance and perspective in their lives.

Mission: to provide high-quality, short-term psychotherapy and stress management classes to the central Maine community.

John Agee, Ph.D.
I earned my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University at Albany, SUNY in 2006, and have been a licensed psychologist in Maine since 2007. My clinical background includes psychological and neuropsychological assessments as well as individual, couples, and group psychotherapy. I completed my pre-doctoral internship and post-doctoral residency at the Maine VA Healthcare System (Togus VA Medical Center). After residency, served for three years as a psychologist and team leader for primary care mental health, doing brief therapy with veterans. During my internship and residency at the VA, I gained valuable experience working with veterans including successful treatment of PTSD and moral injury/survivor guilt. I also gained experience at the VA in health psychology, co-facilitating groups on weight loss/exercise, smoking cessation, and chronic pain management. In the primary care setting, I came to appreciate the value of brief, present-focused therapy using a mix of CBT and other methods.

In 2011, I began working with Dr. Robert Riley at The Brain Clinic of Central Maine, conducting psychological and neuropsychological assessments.

In 2015, I opened The Gardiner Center for Stress Management to focus on my passion of psychotherapy. I love the practice of psychology and being able to help people who feel anxious, scared, stuck, overwhelmed, or misunderstood. It feels great to see people succeed and make progress. My therapeutic style mixes cognitive behavioral therapy techniques with mindfulness and radical acceptance work. I am also deeply influenced by humanistic psychology, which holds genuineness and positivity as primary to facilitating change. I have been trained in many types of therapy, and yet the most important part of being a therapist is to help you feel seen and understood.