Dr. Sean Sullivan’s Background
Dr. Sean Sullivan graduated from Harvard University and subsequently earned a Doctorate of Psychology from Florida School of Professional Psychology. He completed his clinical psychology residency at University of Texas Health Sciences Center, and then completed postdoctoral work focused in Health Psychology at University of California, San Francisco.
Sean has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Clinical Psychology and as a President of an American Psychological Association Section. He has also participated in many other volunteer roles over the years.
Throughout Sean’s career as a psychologist, he’s been reimagining how to share psychology more effectively. In 2012, Sean published The Mind Master’s Silent Journey, A 21-Day Roadmap to Becoming Expert in Your Chosen Life, and created The 21-Day Mind Master Programs and the #1 iPad self-help books app, The Mind Master’s Map. In 2015, he published Be Your Purpose: Ten Science-based Steps to Feeling & Performing Your Best. Recently, Sean published Relationship Booster in the App Store and Google Play.
In the twenty years since his graduate clinical research titled, The Application of Technology to Psychology, Sean has developed expertise, product, and proprietary content to enable delivering psychology more effectively. Until recently, Sean led digital product and content development at Limbix VR — the leading virtual reality for psychology company. As Director of Psychology at Limbix VR, Sean practiced extensively with virtual reality treatments and led VR treatment research. Depending on your situation and goals, Limbix virtual reality treatments may be a component of your therapy sessions.
A video introduction to VR Therapy for specific fears follows.
Evening Hours
In a quiet office in a peaceful space, I often begin therapy after the workday has ended for much of the city. It is not for everyone. But, some people find it a welcome change to usual business hours.
Evening therapy hours grew from both a recognition that it is not easy for many professionals to do therapy during the workday, as well as from research findings indicating that the end of the day triggers a sequence of important natural signals to our hard-wired (and often over-activated) biology. A barrage of naturally occurring chemical messengers remind our body that it’s time to retreat from the high-alert settings of the typical day. The biological settling process that ensues encourages our daily mental pace to slow down. Many people find that this process enables them to hear themselves with increased sensitivity.
Other biological processes can also be supportive of evening work. Natural levels of blood pressure, heart rate and cardiac output are largely influenced by individual circadian rhythms. Each process tends to be lower late at night than throughout the day. Meanwhile, patterns of stress hormone secretion are influenced by light. The naturally quieted physiology late in the day seems to have the paradoxical effect of heightening a willingness to confront the stubborn patterns of thinking and behavior that tend to more actively resist introspection during the pressures of the day.
I’ve found that the sustained change that most people aspire to is anchored in the unbounded intelligence of our body, rather than simply in our head. The changes that propel many of us through the emotional difficulties that we wrestle with at any given time, and that result in movement toward increased peace and self-awareness, often emerge as a result of experiences that shift our view of, and experience of, ourselves. For many people, it seems, a therapy experience during later hours can help cultivate the right environment to support this process.
If this option appeals to you, please ask me about it.
Contact me by phone at (415) 335-7542 or by email at
[email protected].