Student Spotlight: Sean Daugherty

Sean Daugherty, a third-year student in the Wright Institute’s Counseling Psychology Program, was born and raised in a small suburb outside of San Diego called Lemon Grove. He grew up in a working class neighborhood with his parents and his older brother. Sean attended public schools in Lemon Grove and the surrounding areas and still has many close friends from his neighborhood and schools growing up. His father managed a fireplace store and his mother did administrative work at a local community college, but both are now happily retired and still living in the home where Sean and his brother were raised. Neither of his parents attended college and his older brother didn’t complete his college journey, so when Sean graduated from high school, he was setting out on an uncharted path.

For his undergraduate studies, Sean enrolled at San Diego State University where he initially planned to major in geology. “I promptly failed three classes and had to go to community college for six months or a year,” he laughed. “I think I was just not in a good state of mind to be doing college at that point.” Throughout his time at San Diego State, Sean worked full-time at a casino outside of San Diego. He would work from 7pm-4am, then go to classes during the day. It was often difficult to balance, but Sean found a way to make it work. For the first half of his undergraduate experience, he lived at home with his parents, then moved into an apartment with friends for the last couple of years. Once he settled back into San Diego State after his time at community college, Sean decided to major in sustainability and tourism management because he was interested in travel. “Once I got into the major, I learned that a lot of the sustainability piece was about cultural sustainability and not taking an extractive stance in the tourism business,” he explained. “It’s about trying to do tourism in a small-scale way that doesn’t just commoditize the culture.” After five years of study, Sean graduated from San Diego State in 2014 with his bachelor's degree.

In 2014, Sean enrolled at the University of Birmingham in the UK, where he studied international business. Sean had regretted not being able to study abroad during undergrad, so decided to attend graduate school abroad. “I realized that I wasn’t going to make a lot of money with my undergraduate degree and I needed to make more money because I didn’t have financial support from my family,” he admitted. “Studying international business seemed like a good way to become financially secure while still thinking globally.” Adjusting to the cold weather in Birmingham was a challenge for someone who grew up in sunny San Diego, but Sean enjoyed his time in the UK and made a close group of friends with whom he still goes on regular vacations with to this day. Unfortunately, about halfway through his studies at the University of Birmingham, he realized that he wasn’t really interested in the content of his courses, but Sean finished his degree nonetheless and graduated with distinction with his masters of science in international business in 2016.

Sean started working at a technology start-up called Motive in 2016 as a Sales Development Representative. Motive makes hardware that tracks the efficiency of big rig trucks and Sean’s initial role was to cold call companies, making hundreds of calls per day to sell this product. He found this work very draining, but when his boss left the company a few months after Sean started, he was asked to manage their sales development team. After only eight months on the job, he was promoted again to Senior Manager of Sales Development and found himself managing a team of over 150 people in the US and the Philippines. “I didn’t like middle management where I had to tow the party line of the company and manage people’s feelings,” he shared. “But I did enjoy thinking about what’s influential to people and what makes people curious or how people make decisions, and I think that that was when I started getting interested more explicitly in psychology.” From 2018-2019, Sean moved to a business operations and strategy role at Motive, more of an individual role after feeling burnt out from managing so many people.

In 2020, Sean began working at Fivetran as a Customer Success Manager, mentoring new team members, managing customer feedback, and adjusting communication strategies. Fivetran is a global leader in the data movement industry, providing a platform for companies to migrate data from a variety of sources. Sean quickly found that he enjoyed his role at Fivetran more than his previous roles at Motive. “I enjoyed not having so much direct responsibility and not trying to influence co-workers or clients to think one way or the other,” he explained. “It was more of a helping role and less of an influencing role, which felt better to me.”

From 2021-2022, Sean worked at Crisis Support Services of Alameda as a Volunteer Crisis Counselor. “I had started thinking about therapy as a career and I wanted to see if I would actually be good at it,” he reflected. “I worried that I would feel too much or it would make me too anxious to deal with people in distress on a daily basis.” Despite his concerns, he found that counseling folks in distress wasn’t the hardest part of these roles - the hardest part was having to end calls after fifteen minutes because the crisis lines were so understaffed. “A lot of people who called the crisis line didn't have other resources because they were systemically discriminated against or were of moderate to low socioeconomic status,” he recalled. “Knowing that they might not be able to afford or access real, consistent therapy made it really hard to only be able to spend short amounts of time with people who are suffering.” Sean admitted he often went over the fifteen minute limit, but it never felt like enough time.

Since 2023, Sean has worked at Monte Carlo Data, a company that monitors data warehouses for problems, as a Customer Service Manager. In this role, Sean’s primary focus is building relationships with customers. He has truly enjoyed getting to know his customers on a professional and personal level over the last two years, but still feels as though the corporate world isn’t the right fit for him long-term. “I feel misaligned with the general corporate goals of increasing revenue at all costs,” he reflected. “It feels very detached from humanity.”

During his time in the corporate world, Sean found that he was experiencing more and more anxiety and depression as time went on because the work didn’t align with his personal values. He sought relief through meditation and mindfulness and even spoke to his general practitioner and was prescribed medication, which all helped but still left him looking for something more. “At that point, I decided to try psychotherapy for myself and hoped it would help me see what it was like and decide whether I should do this as a career,” he shared. “I thought I was in a pretty good place and had worked out a lot of my stuff, but I definitely had not.” Sean spent the next couple of years in therapy working through his past trauma and current struggles, then decided he’d like to pursue therapy as a career.

In the fall of 2023, Sean enrolled in the Wright Institute’s Counseling Psychology program. “From reading about different programs in the area, it seemed like the Wright Institute was more grounded in social responsibility,” he explained. “It seemed focused on serving the community you live in, which felt important to me.” As he began his studies, Sean realized that many of the skills he acquired in his previous roles, like regulating his emotions and asking questions to better relate to others, would be applicable to his work as a therapist. “I had also learned how to read body language and be aware of the mental and emotional states of others,” he reflected. “It helps to build rapport and connect with people quickly in any job.”

Over the past two years, Sean developed close relationships with the members of his cohort. “After most of our Saturday classes, because I was in the weekend cohort, we would go out to a brewery or restaurant near the school,” he recalled. “It was a nice ritual to kind of unpack what had been going on, catch up, and build relationships with people.” Although he admits that the weekend format took some getting used to at first, Sean feels that it was a good fit for his learning style and really encouraged bonding between the members of the cohort.

One of the biggest challenges that Sean has faced during his studies at the Wright Institute has been learning to just be himself. “For the first six months, I really thought I needed to have this therapist persona in my classes,” he reflected. “I thought I needed to be so aware and emotional and share really deep things all the time.” Although his classmates never pointed it out to him, he learned through his interactions with them and through reflections in his classes that he was unintentionally being performative. “I thought I needed to be someone else to be a ‘real therapist,’” he laughed. “I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that I can just be authentic to myself and that's enough.”

Two courses that really had an impact on Sean during his time at the Wright Institute were Diagnosis and Empirically Supported Treatments with Dr. Sahil Sharma and Counseling Theories and Techniques with Professor Beth Greivel. “Professor Greivel is a very warm, open, relational psychodynamic therapist and hers was a very good first class for our cohort because we did a lot of sharing and reflecting,” he recalled. “I really like how Dr. Sharma thinks about diagnosis in a compassionate way and he also comes from a psychodynamic lens, which is my orientation now as a therapist.” Dr. Sharma is now Sean’s professor for Professional Development Seminar as well, helping to guide him as he progresses through the practicum process.

Last year and again this year, Sean has served as a Student Ambassador for the Wright Institute’s Counseling Psychology program, mentoring first year students in the program. “What drew me to the role was that I wanted to build more community and be more involved at the Wright Institute,” he recalled. “After my first year, I had figured out how to manage the work and school thing, so I wanted to be a resource for people who were trying to figure it out.” Sean has really enjoyed interacting with new and prospective students because they’re very energized and excited about entering the program and the field of psychology.

After some deliberation, Sean decided to defer his practicum to his third year and spend three years instead of two at the Wright Institute. “I decided to defer practicum mostly for financial reasons,” he explained. “I was working and giving up a full-time income is a hard decision to make.” Sean wanted to work another year so he could be in a better financial position heading into practicum, a decision that several of his cohortmates made as well. “It was cool that other people were doing their practicum during our second year classes because they could bring clinical examples to class for us to talk about,” he reflected. “I felt a little left out, but it honestly wasn’t a big deal and it may have been too much for me to manage classes and practicum at the same time.” Sean is very glad to have the opportunity to focus on his practicum this year now that his coursework is complete.

This August, Sean began his practicum placement at The Psychotherapy Institute (TPI) in Berkeley, where he’s working as a staff therapist. In this role, Sean provides therapy to individual adults and some couples, starting with four clients and building up to about ten over the course of the year. “It seems like we have extra training on top of what most practicum sites offer,” he shared. “We have a group just about cultural issues in the context of therapy, an interpersonal process group, group supervision, and individual supervision.” The practicum offered at TPI is a two year placement, so Sean will spend a second year there after graduating from the Wright Institute while he is an associate. “We see clients for the long term, so I may have some clients for the full two years,” he explained. “After I’m done with my practicum placement, I’ll have the opportunity to take those clients with me to my own private practice, which is a cool benefit.”

Outside of his work and studies, Sean enjoys many hobbies during his free time. “I was worried about having time for life during graduate school, but I ran multiple ultramarathons over the last two years, picked up guitar, adopted a dog, had a relationship, worked full-time, and still did well at the Wright Institute,” he shared. “I’m not saying that because I’m exceptional, and I recognize that I have a lot of privilege, but I think it’s totally possible to live a decent life while going through graduate school.” Sean also enjoys reading, especially fantasy novels, and going to rock and metal concerts. Despite his best efforts, he hasn’t convinced his border collie mix, Daisy, to enjoy running with him, but he loves spending time outside playing catch with her.

After graduating from the Wright Institute, Sean hopes to do some work in community mental health and some in private practice while working on his licensure. “What I imagine my career is going to look like five or ten years from now is probably supervising some early clinicians, doing most of my work in private practice with clients, and then maybe teaching a class or two,” he explained. “I think the education I’m receiving at the Wright Institute is preparing me for those things and also providing me with opportunities to build community with my professors and other students.” Sean noted that his practicum experience at The Psychotherapy Institute has also been very helpful in preparing him to work in private practice and supervision and he’s excited to see what the future will bring.