Breaking down barriers and creating space where everyone can thrive

Seal Dwyer’s mission is to give hope and healing a home in central Minnesota. Through Seal Dwyer Counseling LLC, that mission is accomplished for many in the LGBTQ community every day.

Dwyer didn’t always think they’d be a therapist. At one point in their life, the St. Cloud State University alum had sworn off the career path altogether.

“My dad died when I was 12, and he was halfway through his PhD in psychology when he died. … He got his master’s in community psychology at St. Cloud State and he had taken me to all his classes as a 10, 11, 12-year-old, and I read all the textbooks and answered questions in class; the professors put up with me, which was great,” Dwyer said. “And then he died, and I got really angry, and I was like, ‘I will never be a therapist ever, ever, ever.’”

Instead, Dwyer was a book publisher for almost 20 years before realizing it was time for a career change. They had the continuing inner monologue of not wanting to be a therapist, which made them pause and ask why that was the case.

“‘Okay, we have to be a therapist. We’re going to be a therapist.’ And so I said, ‘Alright, universe. If I’m supposed to be a therapist, give me a sign,’” Dwyer said. “I applied to St. Cloud State and was accepted three days later.”

Dwyer earned their master’s in marriage and family therapy in 2016 from SCSU. They previously received their bachelor’s in women’s studies from the University in 2006. They returned to St. Cloud State for their master’s as it offered the flexible scheduling they needed while working full-time and having a mortgage to pay. They launched their private practice in 2017.

“Why I became a therapist for queer people with trauma? I am a queer person with trauma,” Dwyer said. “I have PTSD myself, and one of the professors in the marriage and family therapy program said that if I focused on queer people, I would never have a full caseload. I am oppositional enough that I was like, ‘Game on,’ and now there are 12 of us and we are taking over the world.”

As Seal Dwyer Counseling LLC has grown over the years, so have the treatment options. Everyone on staff is trained in EMDR or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which Dwyer said is the No. 1 treatment in the world for trauma. As far as Dwyer knows, their counseling practice is the largest one in Minnesota that focuses solely on queer people.

“As far as I am aware, I am one of a very few therapists that can say I have people who no longer have borderline personality disorder, I have people who no longer have dissociative identity personality disorders, trauma disorders,” they said. “We can heal them, and we do that here frequently. So as we heal ourselves and we heal our clients and as our clients reach out and heal the community; we’re lifting an entire community, and the reach is incredible.”

As breakthroughs were being made in therapy, Dwyer and their colleagues realized something was still missing.

“As a therapist, as my people were getting better, they kept saying, ‘Okay, I’m getting better, but I don’t have community. I’m getting better, but there’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to do. And — no slam on any of the bars in town — but as an adult, there’s nowhere to hang out if you don’t want to drink. When I was a teenager we had the Java Joint, we had Java Z downtown and we could hang out and just be surly teenagers and nobody would bother us. They discourage being surly teenagers now,” they said. “Then COVID hit and no one had community. I strongly believe that the loss of community was the thing that made COVID the greatest trauma that it was; everybody was isolated. And some people did okay with that, but most people did not. Humans need connection.”

As Dwyer had used yoga for their own trauma healing and found that it helped get them back in their body and develop a better relationship with themself, they started offering yoga classes. People would attend and then started going out for coffee together afterward.

Eventually, Dwyer said they’d like to offer all forms of gender-affirming care. While they won’t be able to do surgeries there, they want to be able to offer every other step leading up to surgery.

“Just all the different services so people can get what they need in a place where they’re not dead-named, their pronouns are used correctly, where they’re not just going to be abandoned,” Dwyer said. “So that’s our next big thing.”

It was important for Dwyer to be able to offer these services in their own hometown.

“I love St. Cloud. I’ve grown up here. On my grammy’s side, I’m five generations. I have a lot of really deep roots here. A lot of people like to dunk on St. Cloud, but it’s a community that’s big enough that we can have a pretty big impact, and small enough that it’s still home, and we can know a lot of people,” they said. “Every time I go to something at Lake George or I do something, I know somebody there. I feel like I matter here, and that really does matter, because when you feel like you matter, then you care and you’re invested and you want to take chances.

“A lot of people were scared about us opening. This is the only LGBTQ center in the state of Minnesota. There is not one in the Cities. We’re it. The closest one is Chicago. So a lot of people were like, ‘Why are you opening it in St. Cloud?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, the Cities is lovely, they’re great, they’re fabulous, there’s a lot of queer agencies over there.’ We all get along, we can all be in one space and we can work together, because we’re small enough that we can fit in one space and we can all work together,” Dwyer continued. “We haven’t had protestors, we haven’t had any negatives. A lot of people were scared we were going to, but this community has welcomed us. Or, they’re scared of me. I’m fine either way. We’re doing something really neat here.”

At the end of the day, Dwyer loves that they get to see the best of humans through their work.

“I get to see humans every day giving their all, trying to heal, stopping generational cycles that are four or five generations long, and healing backwards. It’s so incredible to watch these people shed all of this ick that has followed their families, followed them, grown through their childhood — all of that — and develop lives they’ve determined for themselves, and watch them develop futures,” they said. “To watch them start dreaming; it’s magical.”