Hey there, I’m Shawn.
I founded The Innovative Therapist community because I believe that people walking around not listening to and trusting their bodies is a major drain on the world’s resources.
I also believe in the goodness of people. We all have parts of us capable of connection, compassion, and joy, but also protective parts of us that have stepped in (e.g., fixation with calories, body size, self-criticism, overworking, to name a few) because it hasn’t always been safe to be who we really are.
I’m pretty obsessed with learning the best ways to help my clients and other therapists in their role of liberating people from the drain of disordered eating and lack of self trust.
Because at The Innovative Therapist, we believe that teaching people to build trust with their bodies means more mental and emotional bandwidth available to create a more equitable and kind world. 🌈✌🏻✌🏽✌🏿🌳
To do this, we create supportive learning environments for therapists and others who want to engage in this courageous work.
So that you can use your unique gifts to make a bigger impact, without the burnout.
Because diet culture and other oppressive systems doesn’t deserve to win.
About Shawn
I’m Shawn, and I live with my family in Grand Rapids, MI.
Fun fact: I really hate small talk (please don’t talk to me for more than 30 seconds about the weather 😁) and my favorite thing is to have coffee ☕ or a hazy IPA 🍺 ideally while looking over a body of water and having a deep talk about the meaning of life.
I have two kiddos, a great partner, and a pug named Teddy who I talk to in a super embarrassing voice.
I started tap dance as an adult and it brings me so much joy. I can’t get enough of shows like Ted Lasso, Parenthood, and other shows with great characters that embody a beautiful combination of courage, vulnerability and strong leadership.
I also have a personal history with disordered eating that I’m no longer ashamed to share.
We Can and Need to Do Better
The field of weight management is largely ineffective and yet most of us were trained in the weight-centric paradigm. The field of mental health has a lot of flaws too, namely that the “experts” hold all the knowledge and answers, deeply discounting the intuition wisdom held in people’s bodies.
Motivation science tells us that for long-term sustainable change, we need to meet three key psychological needs:
- Autonomy (freedom of choice without excessive pressure)
- Competence (feeling effective, “I got this”)
- and Relatedness (a sense that one belongs)
The mental health and weight management fields (among others) are missing the mark in many ways when it comes to those needs. We can and need to do better.
But to do better, we need safe spaces to learn and grow.
This involves looking at the research, the real-life stories, and where we as a field have gotten things very wrong, and owning where most of us have been a part of harmful systems.
For an overview, check out my post on the failures of the weight management world here, and my podcast about bringing innovative thinking to the field of mental health here.
By taking an honest look at where the field has failed, we can become better therapists and healers and help our clients release from the shame they hold about their bodies and desires and regain the trust that they so deeply deserve to feel.
My Hope for Us
My goal is to create an amazing group of healers who are committed to thinking innovatively and helping ourselves and our clients build self-trust so we can learn and grow together. Diet culture and our world full of oppressive systems and messages that we can’t trust ourselves isn’t going away, so it’s time to band together to help fight it in the way that clients can receive.
In this community, we help you learn to:
- Meet clients wherever they are on their journey
- Learn effective strategies to build clients self-trust (which is majorly informed by Internal Family Systems therapy because I’ve found it incredibly effective personally and professionally)
- Turn towards the parts of you that feel self-doubt and get stuck with your clients so everyone (your clients and you) gets unstuck
- Get curious about your unique zone of genius and how you might use it to help people, with less burnout
- Connect with the other amazing people in the field and lift one another up in this crucial work
Free Information, Workshops, and Resources
- Subscribe to my Insider’s Community to receive emails when a new blog post/podcast goes live!
- Sign up here to be notified when we have workshops and trainings, consultation groups, or retreats, such as the one called Balancing the desire for weight loss with a peaceful relationship with food: Helping our clients navigate the nuance while building self-trust
- Want a practical exercise to use with clients when they are struggling with a part of them that really wants to lose weight? Find my #1 favorite exercise to help them explore this here!
- If you have questions or just want to say hi, send me an email at info@drshawnhondorp.com! I can’t wait to connect.
Did you check out the podcast yet? The Innovative Therapist podcast can be found here and on all major podcast players.
Here’s to learning and growth, ❤️
Shawn
Representative Research Presentations and Publications
Ertle, E., & Hondorp, S. N. (2019). Exercise motivation in bariatric surgery patients: A quality improvement project. Poster presented on November 1st, 2019 at the 2nd annual Michigan Health Psychology Symposium.
Hondorp, S. N., Ertle, E., Dykstra, H., Eberhart, L., Baldwin, A., & Boyden, T. (2019). Preventive Cardiology Clinic: An integrated approach to lifestyle medicine. Talk given on November 8th, 2019 at the annual convention of the American College of Cardiology Michigan Chapter.
Ertle, E. & Hondorp, S. N. (2019). Improving behavioral screening and follow-up after bariatric surgery to ensure long-term lifestyle changes: A quality improvement project. Poster presented on April 24th, 2019 at the annual Grand Rapids Citywide Research Day.
Hondorp, S. N., Preston, R., Schroeder, E., de Voest, Margaret, Sohn, M., & Schram, J. (2018). Association of pre-operative behavioral measures with antidepressant medications one year after bariatric surgery [published abstract]. Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, 14, S184.
Jackson, J. L., Leslie, C. E., & Hondorp, S. N. (2018). Depressive and anxiety symptoms in adult congenital heart disease: Prevalence, health impact, and treatment. Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, 61, 294-299.
Katterman, S. N., Miles, M., de Voest, M., Sohn, M. & Schram, J. (2016). Changes in psychotropic medications after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy [published abstract].Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, 12, S45.
Corsica, J., Hood, M. M., Katterman, S. N., Kleinman, B., & Ivan, I. (2014). Development of a novel mindfulness and cognitive behavioral intervention for stress-eating: A comparative pilot study. Eating Behaviors, 15, 694-699.
Katterman, S. N., Kleinman, B.,Hood, M. M., Nackers, L. M., & Corsica, J. (2014). Mindfulness meditation as an intervention for obesity and overeating behaviors: A systematic review. Eating Behaviors, 15, 197-204.
Katterman, S. N., Goldstein, S. P., Butryn, M. L., Forman, E. M., & Lowe, M. R. (2014). Efficacy of an acceptance-based behavioral intervention for weight gain prevention in young adult women. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 3, 45-50.
Lowe, M. R., Doshi, S. D., Katterman, S. N., & Feig, E. H. (2013). Dieting and restrained eating as prospective predictors of weight gain. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 1-7.
*Goldstein, S. P., Katterman, S. N., & Lowe, M. R. (2013). Relationship of dieting and restrained eating to self-reported caloric intake in female college freshmen. Eating Behaviors, 14, 237-240.
Witt, A., Katterman, S. N., &Lowe, M. R. (2013). Assessing the three types of dieting in the Three-Factor Model of dieting: The Dieting and Weight History Questionnaire. Appetite, 63, 24-30.
Lowe, M. R., Coletta, M. C., & Katterman, S. N. (2012). Chronic Dieting. In T. F. Cash (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance (Vol. 1, pp. 386-391). San Diego: Academic Press.
Katterman, S. N., & Klump, K. L. (2010). Stigmatization of eating disorders: A controlled study of the effects of the television show Starved. Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, 18, 153-164.
Chen, E, Bocchieri-Ricciardi, L., Munoz, D., Fischer, S., Katterman, S. N., Roehrig, M., Dymek-Valentine, M., Alverdy, J., & Le Grange, D. (2007). Depressed mood in class III obesity predicted by weight-related stigma. Obesity Surgery, 17, 673-675.
Fischer, S., Chen, E., Katterman, S. N., Roehrig, M., Bochierri-Ricciardi, L., Munoz, D., Dymek-Valentine, M., Alverdy, J., & Le Grange, D. (2007). Emotional eating in a morbidly obese bariatric surgery seeking population. Obesity Surgery, 17, 778-784.