Scott Whelan, LMFT

My approach is integrative, relational, and strengths-based, bringing together insight and understanding with ways of working directly with emotion, memory, relationships, and the body. Alongside what hurts or feels stuck, I’m interested in the strengths, values, creativity, and capacities you already bring with you, and what may already be working, even when it’s hard to see. I integrate somatic therapy, internal family systems (IFS) and parts work, attachment-focused eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), narrative therapy, and relational and psychodynamic therapy. As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in California, I help clients reconnect with their authentic selves. Together, we will identify and explore what is blocking you from living fully as the creative person you are. Past trauma, societal expectations, family dysfunction, and other harmful systems and “norms” may have caused shame and disconnection from your true self and values, resulting in people-pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, and other painful patterns that are no longer serving you. I’m very interested in who you are outside of these patterns, and in creating space and possibility for who you are becoming. I feel lucky to work with highly sensitive people, artists, and creatives, and I have worked extensively with artists, musicians, filmmakers, burnt-out millennials, neurodivergent people, LGBTQ+ individuals, teens, and adults. I show up as a real, authentic human, and as a grounded, passionate advocate for the idea that therapy is an act of resistance. Navigating collective trauma, political injustice, career and family stress, and relationships, while trying to stay sane and make your art without selling your soul, is hard, and it does not need to be done alone. My practice is anti-oppressive, identity-affirming, strengths-based, and trauma-informed. Please contact me for a free consult so we can connect.