Dr. Maureen Gallagher
Your guide to deeper inner relationship
• Psychotherapy
• Somatic Education
• Inner Relationship Focusing (S/IRF)
What is Somatic Inner Relationship Focusing and how can it help you?
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Somatics + Inner Relationship Focusing
( S-I-R-F )…What is it?
Well, specifically….
Somatic Experiencing™ was developed by Dr. Peter Levine and refines over more than four decades of clinical work. It’s a body-based approach to healing the stress and shock that get stored in the nervous system, rather than just the mind.
Inner Relationship Focusing (developed by Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin) is a gentle practice of turning toward our inner states with curiosity instead of judgment. We learn it first in our own bodies, then we learn to bring that same quality of presence into how we work with others.
Somatic Experiencing taught me how to know and work with the body.
Inner Relationship Focusing taught me how to be in relationship with what I find inside.
That combination is what became the modality S/IRF.
If you’re someone who understands why a harmful behavior exists, and still can’t figure out how to shift it…
OR
you’re still searching for answers as to where and why a behavior began…
The frustration you feel is valid.
It’s also a sign that you are getting closer to a much better question.
The truth is, it’s not crucial (for the purpose of healing) where you originally learned the behavior.
It matters more that you can feel, and eventually relate to where it lives inside of you NOW and what it’s trying to protect you from.
I want you to move past wondering what’s wrong with you, and begin asking something more precise:
How do I reach the place where this repeated experience actually lives inside me and relate to it as a friend?
That is exactly the right question, and it’s where our work together begins.
Experience it for yourself in just 10 minutes
Are you ready to meet your inner life with compassion?
Subscribe to receive 2 sample chapters from my Inner Critics Companion Guide.
It’s full of:
hand-on resources and prompts
my clinical reflections from 25+ years of therapeutic practice
Current & Upcoming Trainings:
Inner Critics
Move from inner critical states and behaviours to inner-companioning in 6 weeks. Develop a way forward that is no longer at odds with this important part of your inner life, and learn how to lead others through too.
S/IRF Academy
Learn the modality of Somatically Informed Inner Relationship Focusing. This program teaches how to be with your own experience, and guide others into relationship with their inner experiences, especially what’s messy, unclear, or stuck.
Self Sabotage
This dedicated 6 week container devoted to building relationship with a real struggle of your own. It’s how you can access 1-1 coaching with me. Get on the waitlist to be notified first when it next opens.
Group Case Consults
Every Month
Therapists, need support with a difficult case?
Book an upcoming group case consult. Specifically geared toward SE* students, with SE credit available.
Things can be different.
You can re-learn how you relate to yourself. You can update old scripts and create a rich therapeutic environment for others to do the same.
As a Psychologist of 25+ years, I know what it means to develop your own inner relationships, and through them, finally harness your own innate capacity to transform
“My professional practice has improved, and I have a mentor that is still ahead of me in my professional practice. I like the stability I have been able to receive of having someone there to go to for support.”
— Yoshie, Psychotherapist
“[This work allows] much deeper access to difficult and unknown material in the patient. Maureen’s model and teaching creates a safe and effective approach to the work. Thorough and passionate are key words to how I experienced learning with Maureen. I am capable of listening for and providing adequate support for the patient to stay with and explore rich and healing therapuetic moments.”
— Vincent, Psychotherapy
“Maureen's teachings are clear and meticulous, safeguarding the integrity of the material she teaches. Her teachings are practical and can be integrated into my work seamlessly.
“Studying SIRF with Maureen led me to do my own personal S/IRF work which shifted my sense of myself considerably leading to clearer and more organic ways of living my life and doing my work. Studying SE with her has shifted to course of my career and the way I work with clients.”
— Shideh, Psychologist, Educator
“I immediately found Inner Relationship Focusing deeply helpful in working with my clients to begin to access previously blocked parts. It has made my work much more rich and helped by grow so much, both personally and professionally.”
— Elisabeth, LMFT in private practice
“It’s not a way through a manual. A lot of forms of self help can feel like a step by step manual you are taught to follow. It gets super logical - but this is so relational that you don’t need to know therapy to do this.”
— Luis Mojica
“I was amazed by how quickly the self-sabotaging pattern that had kept me stuck for years began to unwind through this 6-week course. Somatic IRF not only addressed what I came in with—it gave me a tool I’ll carry forward for life. As an executive leadership coach, I’ve also started integrating it into my own work with clients, and the results have been powerful.”
— Alison Deutsch
“I hear your voice so often when I am working with clients and my clients are benefiting from my knowledge of IRF (with somatics, EMDR and parts work). It was just the missing piece I needed. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with the world.”
— Christine Monroe, Marriage and Family Therapist
“[Through IRF] there was a deepening of surprisingly transformative experience accessed in somatic experiencing training with my struggles with chronic dissociative experiences. IRF is a powerful, always available tool that helps me restore self-cohesion. I feel less anxious and more able to calmly manage my 'system'.”
— Annonymous