Education & Training
Phyllis C. Solon, PsyD, LP is a clinician, consultant and trainer in South Minneapolis and was instrumental in developing the multicultural doctoral training program at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. Phyllis has worked to understand neurodiverse people and train clinicians, families and educators since 1995 and has designed and taught multiple courses in the U.S. and abroad since 1998. She is also the co-developer of the AIR Network Model of understanding and working with people with complex PTSD and dissociative experiences and has helped train over 450 clinicians worldwide in the model since 2015.

Background

Phyllis grew up in an Irish and Polish, Catholic family on the Southside of Chicago in a large extended family. Grandparents on both sides were from the “old country” and came to Chicago in the early 1900’s. Phyllis has been conscious of racism and sexism since the 70’s and has been on a journey of dismantling both, internally and in external systems, since then. Professionally, Phyllis has trained and consulted in mental health, education and religious organizations on a range of topics concerning culture, diversity, inclusion, privilege and intersectionality since the mid 1990’s and has taught courses on multiculturalism in counseling and supervision to doctoral students for the last 25 years.

Areas of Clinical Interest

Areas of clinical competency and specialization include work with clients with a history of profound trauma and dissociation, families who have adopted trans-racially and/or trans-nationally, neurodiversity and autism spectrum conditions and all the overlapping spaces amongst them. She has worked as a therapist, supervisor, and clinical director in a variety of multidisciplinary and multicultural clinical settings serving the needs of children, adolescents, and families. Well versed in the neurology of attunement, attachment, development and trauma and the use of interpersonal neurobiology in providing therapy across the life span, she has conducted individual, couples, family and group therapy with children, adolescents, and adults. In addition, she provides clinical consultation on trauma, multiculturalism, autism and many other topics to professionals and organizations and has designed and taught a wide variety of psychology courses both in the United States and abroad.

Personal Statement

Phyllis sees teaching and learning as taking place within the context of relationships and believes that the highest good is to love, honor and protect others, particularly children and those who cannot protect themselves. She understands therapy as the practice of deep listening for each person’s dignity to clear a space so that they can free themselves from all the bindings that have been placed upon them. She has learned over a long period of time that there is no such thing as self-sufficiency: we are all intensely and intrinsically interdependent. She teaches and practices from the perspective that every interaction has the potential to hurt or to heal and tries to fall as much on the healing side as possible.

Dr. Solon works as a clinical supervisor and does not keep an individual caseload at this time.