Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Shannan Crawford.
Hi Dr. Crawford, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
As an avid dreamer, when attempting to advance toward my dreams I noticed my own self-limiting beliefs and frustrating self-sabotage behavior. Grateful that I come from a line of resilient entrepreneurs, I wasn’t willing to stay stuck in the self-defeating patterns that I couldn’t get out of with willpower alone. As a communications major pursuing acting, desiring personal growth and expansion, I went to my college counseling center to help me resolve unremitting self-esteem issues that fed into multiple annoying behaviors that were sabotaging my goals. In my intake appointment, when asked about my childhood, I said honestly, “I don’t remember it.” To which the counselor replied with overt annoyance, “Why don’t you come back when you’re not being resistant?” Taken aback and irritated by her gross misperception of me I made an internal judgment, “Psychology is the stupidest profession, I would never be a psychologist.” Fortunately, I didn’t give up completely, eventually finding a more seasoned therapist who provided a hybrid approach of incorporating spirituality with more advanced training on the unconscious mind and resolving unconscious memories. It was through my positive experience with her that I no longer carried shame for being unable to resolve my self-limiting-beliefs behaviors. I now understood that there are roots and that is why a symptom-reduction approach like CBT was not helpful for me. Once unconscious trauma memories were identified and started to be worked on, I gained clarity into understanding the symbolic nature of my triggers and coping mechanisms. I cannot tell you what a relief it was to realize, “I am not broken! These symptoms are not signs of weakness, rather they are symbolic expressions of unresolved traumas and maladaptive core beliefs.” That, I now knew could be worked on. With this insight, I was able to start gaining closure to repressed traumas that no longer served as roots to the surfacing issues I had struggled with my entire life. From that experience, I felt my heart leap with the desire to help other dreamers and leaders resolve internal dynamics in order to free them up to thrive, personally, relationally, spiritually, and vocationally.
In experiencing the tangible difference of no longer being enslaved or tethered to symbolic dynamics or trauma triggers, my heart leaped at the desire to help others gain this sense of personal and relational freedom. I quickly changed my major, setting out to pursue psychology – desiring to learn all I could about the internal world. Realizing that mastery matters, I knew I owed it to my clients to gain the highest level of training and aptitude in mental health by earning my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at APA accredited Regent University in Virginia. The road to identifying my niche expertise included working at diverse clinical settings including university counseling centers, outpatient counseling centers, an inpatient hospital center, traveling nationally and internationally to provide training on mental health in Singapore, Indonesia, and later in Brazil, India, and Bangladesh, and providing leadership consulting in business settings.
After years of graduate training, supervision, research, and working for various mental health clinics, in March of 2012, my passion for business, service, and mental health converged as I felt equal parts nervous and confident to start my own practice. Providing psychotherapy for individuals, couples, families and specializing in leadership consulting to help leaders and influencers identify and resolve unconscious dynamics producing self-limiting beliefs and forms of self-sabotage hindering their full impact.
In 2016 I was invited to start teaching as an adjunct professor at The King’s University in Southlake, TX. It is one of my highest honors to invest in training and mentoring future counselors in cultivating a psychodynamic understanding to provide depth psychology work that does not just help at the conscious symptom-reduction-level but also fosters an experience that brings closure to the unconscious root dynamics producing the symptoms. It is my joy to train practitioners in in-depth psychology to help our clients get to the roots of their symptoms (anxiety, depression, etc. – all that has been plaguing them).
Another venture of mine was born out of the season of global unrest when COVID hit. I began writing the technical manual for the Restoring-Self-Cohesion approach (RSC) ®. And yet, as a creative, it organically blossomed into an adventure fiction trilogy, told through espionage and romance, allegorically illuminating the internal world that will bring clarity at a sociocultural level to help the general population understand how to restore cohesion to our internal world so we all may gain greater peace and freedom in within ourselves.
A huge passion of mine is transforming and redeeming culture, which led to the Unlock U with Dr. Shannan Crawford podcast (linked here). It has been a rewarding experience to be able to connect with entrepreneurs, leaders, psychologists, nutritionists, trauma survivors, relationship experts, and everyone in between in an effort to share keys to help our community gain greater joy and peace, personally, professionally, relationally, and spiritually.
I have also been a conference and retreat speaker since 2012 and have had the honor and privilege of learning from and teaching others in many different spheres of influence.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Before I started my business, I had worked for group practices that were pretty turn-key. I showed up to do the therapy, and then all of the administrative duties were taken care of. It was a huge risk to start my own practice and, to be honest, it took a lot of courage to take that leap of taking on running the business side as well as providing the therapy. In any industry, scaling up brings added obstacles. Increased overhead expenses, more people working yielding more overhead, and also opportunities for miscommunications are all things I had to face when I initially started my practice. In the very beginning, as with many entrepreneurs, I was the CEO, janitor, secretary, HR, and therapist. There was a lot of trial and error until finding the right people with whom I could trust to partner. With each hurdle, I made sure to surround myself with business mentors to gain counsel and advice. I love collaborating with colleagues in my industry and outside of my industry so we can provide mutual support, encouragement, and organic connections that help open doors for one another.
As a life-long learner, with over 10+ years as a psychologist and business owner, I want to remain curious, innovative, humble, and teachable, so my team and I are always on the leading edge of providing the best therapy and consulting for our clients. I’ve invested my life building and learning who I am before I ever considered bringing other associates to the group and took a long time vetting and training my current amazing team. I am very proud and eternally grateful for our team of associates in the practice.
The same story goes for the podcast. It’s a risk to take the leap of starting something new in a field that isn’t fully known and there are obstacles and learning curves to be mindful of. I’ve been very fortunate both in the practice and with the podcast in hearing the constant feedback of how we are strategically and powerfully investing in people for the positive transformation in their personal, relational, and professional lives. There’s a lot of sacrifice behind the scenes which requires a high work ethic. And in the words of Angela Duckworth, “I’m glad I have a lot of grit.” This helps me as a leadership consultant, combined with the psychological principles, to provide optimal performance techniques for my clients because I’ve walked it with people and walked it in my own business in helping leaders and influencers overcome limitations in order to thrive and truly enjoy their personal life as much as their vocation.
We’ve been impressed with Dr. Crawford & Associates, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I love people and traveling the world! I love savoring new cultures and living life to the fullest. With a rich personal life, constantly challenging myself personally and professionally, I love to bring out vitality and restore the sense of awe and wonder for others to find life new and magical again. As a clinical psychologist, with the highest level of training in mental health including a postdoctoral fellowship in psychodynamic integration, combined with my background in business and leadership, I’ve created a hybrid-strategic approach to therapy called Restoring-Self-Cohesion (RSC) ®, which in essence helps people understand their internal world by bringing cohesion to all parts of self. Psychodynamic therapy helps us lower our defense mechanisms enabling us to go to the unconscious roots where, for example, we may know better, but can’t do better. I love removing the shame and confusion with clinical theory and research when I can explain the incongruencies between what we know with our heads and yet feel in our hearts. As the innovator-expert of RSC, I am frequently invited to provide continuing education for therapists, coaches, businesses, organizations, and leaders. Overall, helping and serving people is incredibly rewarding and we have helped thousands as of this year!
It is also a great passion of mine to work in areas of restoring emotional connection and intimacy in romantic and family relationships. By identifying unconscious dynamics, we sidestep the common fights by identifying the underlying need of each person and the appropriate ways to honor and meet the underlying need in ways that are satisfying and mutually beneficial for the couple. It is invigorating to see demoralized fragmented relationships start to spark romance, play, creative expression, and spontaneous enjoyment of one another once again.
An ethos of our group practice is to bring in cutting-edge continuing education to always be leading in best practices for our clients. We are more than just therapists, we are constantly adding to our multidisciplinary framework as we add to our repertoire to move toward holistic care for every individual, couple, and family that we serve. We are always open to meeting with therapists as well as traditional and alternative medicine practitioners for collaboration. If it is a good fit, we are open to considering new teammates as we passionately pursue providing an innovative and streamlined approach for our clients.
My specializations include but are not limited to, leadership, improving relationship dynamics, resolving childhood trauma, anxiety, grief, adjustment, and depression. The associates are well versed in family dynamics, marriages, mood disorders, adjustment disorders, grief, divorce, trauma, anxiety, and helping adolescents navigate the transition to college and young adulthood.
A massive catalyst to the success of Dr. Crawford & Associates is our ASSOCIATES. Our practice would not be where we are today without our amazing world-changers and am so grateful, they are part of this team! These are vetted, seasoned, mature people who each have rich life experience outside of therapy as well as high levels of clinical training. They are supervised by me, and they are each phenomenal with unique skill sets that seamlessly tailor to the needs of the client.
The distinctive value of the “Unlock U with Dr. Shannan Crawford” podcast is the unique perspective of having a clinical psychologist interview thought-leaders on topics pertinent to our everyday life. It is a show unlike any other as we boldly share candidly from our own experiences to illuminate keys and practical action steps on unlocking internal roadblocks and hindrances. Another added benefit you’ll see as you watch/listen to the podcast is how my Enneagram 7 comes out when you see that I don’t want anything to be boring or stuffy! It is important to me that we are accurate, adding value, but most importantly making it fun and interesting. Life is serious enough; we need a positive community within which to build internal skills and mindsets while having fun. I have an acting background and really enjoy communicating in an engaging and upbeat way, so being able to interview fantastic thought-leaders with high energy is inevitable and totally energizes my batteries. The hope of this podcast is to unlock you, relationally, emotionally, spiritually, and vocationally. Psychology can be difficult to digest at times, but when presented on a platter of various speakers, topics, and expertise, therein lies a feast of new insights that I believe you will really enjoy. We blend substance with entertainment and go over deep topics through relatable stories that bring to life psychological principles that we can glean from and apply in our own journey. We’re all in this together… so we might as well work on ourselves so we can collectively enjoy our relationships at home, at work, and in the community more! Whether it’s me or my amazing guests, we pull out the gold in each other and in our vibrant community so we can link arms, and all become better together. I’m proud to highlight thought leaders offering actionable steps for redemption, for seeing beauty from ashes, restoring hope, and instilling empowerment to see those who are – leaders of one – and – leaders of millions – restore the joy in their role of influencing the world for the better! I hope you can join our Unlock U community!
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
When I was very little, I was extremely outgoing. As a strong empath, I didn’t know a stranger and wanted to include everyone. As previously stated, I was very entrepreneurial, and my play centered around creating businesses. Selling jewelry, publishing a magazine, repurposing chandelier pieces for profit, my creative mind was always seeking out business. And then I started experiencing depression, self-harm, self-esteem issues, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fix it. My original joy, creativity, boldness, and hope were replaced by heavy depression, insecurity, self-hatred, and self-sabotage. After years of trying to work on me through traditional counseling approaches, knowing what to do, and yet not knowing how to apply it, or the improvement only lasting a short period before the symptoms came back, my life was changed with an inner healing approach that helped reveal the unconscious childhood trauma at the base of those symptoms. Piquing my interest, I then pursued learning about psychodynamic theories and inner-healing models. My interest didn’t stop there. A fire was lit to discover all I could through attaining my doctorate in clinical psychology, getting my license, and completing a year of postdoctoral psychoanalysis training.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@drshannancrawford.com
- Website: https://drshannancrawford.com
- Instagram: @DrShannanCrawford
- Facebook: facebook.com/DrShannanCrawford1
- Youtube: Youtube.com/DrShannanCrawford
- Other: https://www.charismapodcastnetwork.com/show/unlocku/
Subscriber Shoutout: Sara Drehobl | Your Unicorn of Real Estate
“I am a local Realtor in the Greater DFW area! I spend my days playing matchmaker, therapist and dream maker to my Clients all around the metroplex!” – Sara Drehobl
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