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Meet the Therapist

I became a therapist because therapy actually worked — not the version where you talk about your problems until time is up, but the version where something shifts. Where the thing you've been carrying becomes something you can finally see from a different angle.

The people I work with are usually thoughtful, reflective — and stuck anyway. That's exactly where this kind of work begins.

CIIS, San Francisco Gestalt & Depth Psychology Psychoanalytic Training Object Relations Somatic Work In-person · Palo Alto Telehealth · CA-wide
Shawn Walters
The Philosophy

How I think about this work.

The more capable someone appears on the outside, the harder it often is to ask for help — not because asking is hard, but because it requires admitting that the competence that's always worked isn't working this time.

Most therapy addresses the surface. Depth work goes looking for what's underneath. The pattern that keeps repeating. The relationship that hits the same wall. The success that doesn't feel like enough. These aren't problems to be solved — they're signals. Something in the interior life is asking for attention, and it will keep asking until it gets it.

That's what I'm trying to offer: a place where you don't have to be competent, or explain yourself, or already have insight into your own patterns. Where the goal isn't to be fixed — but to be genuinely met.

I trained at CIIS in depth psychology, Gestalt, and somatic work. Three months at Plum Village in France and three at Deer Park showed me what genuine presence actually looks like. I work with thoughtful, high-functioning people who have tried the easier version of this — and are ready for something that goes somewhere.

If this resonates — even a little — a 15-minute conversation costs nothing.

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Before this

I came to this work
by a different route.

Before the degree, I spent two decades working alongside artists and engineers — people building things that mattered to them and that quietly cost them. I know that terrain from the inside. The high performance, the invisible toll, the competence that starts to feel like a cage.

I came to depth work through my own necessity. The training came after. That order matters — it means the work I do here isn't purely theoretical. It's informed by knowing what it actually feels like to carry more than shows on the surface.

Training & Credentials
M.A. Integral Counseling Psychology — California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco
Relational Gestalt Therapy — Residential Training
Psychoanalytic Training — ongoing
Plum Village 3-Month Mindfulness Residential, France · Deer Park Monastery, California
Registered Associate MFT #138642 — supervised by Christina Miller-Martinez, LMFT #105663, A Good Place Therapy, Palo Alto

The first conversation
is always free.

15 minutes. No forms. We talk. You can ask anything.

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