Sean Callahan (He/they/she)

My Approach to Helping

I am passionate about helping people feel at home in themselves. I integrate Somatic IFS and Gestalt therapies to support others in staying radically present with their experience, going beyond the stories that keep us stuck in our heads and disconnected from ourselves and each other. The intention of this work is to deepen your relationship and trust in yourself, which leads to more authentic, meaningful, and vibrant relationships with others and the world around you. Showing up as your self can be terrifying, but I believe that a meaningful life requires being valued for who you truly are. My approach is: Relational, because we come to understand ourselves through our relationships with others. Somatic, because our bodies are capable of processing information and experiences that we can’t access through thinking. Spiritually engaging, because when we don't include the human spirit, we ignore important aspects of who we are. Grounded in IFS, because it is both powerful and respectful.

Why I Became a Therapist

While completing a master’s degree in forest ecology, I felt overwhelmed by the disconnect between the research I was doing and the change that I hoped to see in how we care for our planet, our non-human relatives, and one another. I felt strongly that we already had enough information to know that we need to make changes, and yet everywhere I looked I saw how trapped we were in our systems and ways of being that rely on exploitation and extraction, and how many of us seemed to be struggling in those same systems. So my focus shifted towards understanding people, and what became clear is that when we experience trauma and do not have the opportunity to heal and make sense of what we’ve gone through, we pass that trauma on to others and to the world around us even as we continue to suffer ourselves. This is how I understand the way we’ve arrived where we are today, and it is why I decided that the most meaningful thing I could do is find a way to heal and help others do the same.