Personal BIO

Born in Texas, Adrianne spent her early years in a small agricultural community in California's Imperial Valley where her family's seed business was headquartered. She spent summers at the family beach home near Windansea beach in La Jolla.

The quest for an expanded view of the world began during Adrianne's adolescent years as she dealt with the challenge of psoriasis, a non-contagious skin disease. It is a facet of life for an estimated 5-6 million Americans, and about 80 million people around the world. And it is a life-long condition. Adrianne, covered with the condition, found herself struggling with her self-esteem.

"I knew I had to accept myself just as I was – but I didn't know how to do it. I also recognized that I was creating the disease somehow, that there was a connection between my psoriasis and my tendency to worry constantly about everything. But I didn't know how to work with that either."

Inspired to learn, Adrianne Ahern moved forward quickly through her education, entering university as a linguistics major at sixteen years of age, a time during which she discovered the joy of running. As she disciplined herself to her newly-formed routine of regularly jogging several miles a day around the UCLA campus, Adrianne discovered a state of stillness where she could more clearly see the world around her. That perspective of "conscious awareness integrated into a life led by grounded choices" would become the precepts that form the foundation of Adrianne Ahern's personal and professional today.

After living in London for a year and traveling through Europe, a critical and profound moment came for Adrianne when her father became seriously ill with cancer. Subsequent to his passing, she refocused on academic excellence and began to study Psychology at the University of San Francisco, where she received a Master's in Counseling Psychology (1990).

While in the Bay Area, Adrianne became reacquainted with, and subsequently began a lifelong relationship with, Barry Grundland, a practicing psychiatrist. They married in 1991, and Adrianne went on to complete a second Master's degree (1992) and a doctorate (1994) in Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP).

In 1994, Adrianne and Barry moved to Southern California where she accepted a post-doctoral position at Mercy Hospital in San Diego and became licensed as a Clinical Psychologist. She spent the next six years working with Dr. Judy Churchill, her professional mentor at Scripps Health. During this period in San Diego, Adrianne began to sense there was something within her to share with a broader audience. She attended workshops with Richard Moss that were focused on consciousness, purpose and meaning in life, and breaking through conditioned identifications. Though not a writer, she began to write about her epiphanies, research, and discoveries within her clinical work. Adrianne ended up with over 400 pages of material.

In 2001, Adrianne and Barry moved to Reno, Nevada, and she established a private practice there and in San Diego. Her neurofeedback work was especially attractive to athletes and business people who sought peak performance. Over the next few years, she edited her 400 pages into the book that was to become Snap Out of It NOW! Tenacious and driven by the sense that her work needed to be shared, it took Adrianne a year to find an agent, another year to find a publisher, and yet another year to see the book in print (2007).

From that point, she created CD's, keynote speeches, workshops, and another book, Back in Charge! (June, 2009).  She has also developed a public television special (Snap Out of It NOW! with Dr. Adrianne Ahern) to be aired beginning in Spring 2009. "All of these recent activities were out of my comfort zone, but that internal voice to continue was strong. I had to apply my own methods to break through the limitations that would have stopped me along the way."  Adrianne now lives with her husband in Del Mar, CA and focuses her time on her San Diego private practice, speaking to large audiences and national organizations and creating new tools (CD's, articles, and books) for the public.