It’s time to reclaim your life.

Sarah James Pearse, Licensed mental health counselor

You remember a time when not being able to imagine a path forward and feeling alone in what you’re going through wasn’t the “norm” …but those days feel like a distant memory.

Don’t you wish you had the roadmap to change that?

You’ve come to the right place.

I’m Sarah, and I help individuals just like you: ones that have it within them to build rewarding relationships and a life full of purpose, but just need the support to get there.

I help my clients find self-acceptance, self-trust, and self-efficacy by equipping them with the tools they need to better understand themselves and free themselves of the patterns that get in the way of their deeper why.

What does therapy with me look like?

I know that finding the right therapist can feel overwhelming and reading someone’s resume isn’t going to help give you any real idea of what it’s like to work with them. So, what you really want to know is what I’m like as a person and how that translates to what I’m like as a therapist…

Well, as a person I can be…

• Somewhat awkward and nerdy (but comfortable with it)
• I spend my time exploring the world of ideas in books and conversation
• I laugh often
• I find most humans I meet endlessly interesting
• I identify as queer + mixed race
• I am Libra sun, moon, + rising (I’m told I have a very light-hearted “airy” energy!)

How does this translate to me as a therapist?

• I tend to show up calm when other emotions around me are big
• I tend to incorporate a lot of psychoeducation and neuroscience because I find left brain understanding very helpful in containing right brain overwhelm
• I joke and laugh with you when appropriate
• At times I stumble over my words from excitement
• I genuinely enjoy the process of getting to know you

“Adults envy the openhearted and open-minded explorations of children; seeing their joy and curiosity, we pine for our own lost capacity for wide-eyed wonder.”

– Gabor Mate

Many of today’s solutions for individual therapy are a one-size-fits-all approach, leading so many to feel like they don’t know how to be themselves in therapy. I know that your circumstances are unique, so I use an integrative approach which combines a lot of different techniques depending on who you are as a person and your specific issue, although always from a trauma-informed lens.

I am dedicated to helping people regain a sense of balance in their lives.

My training in DBT, EMDR, and IFS means I have the expertise you deserve when building emotional resilience, healing from your past, and re-writing your new narrative. But at the end of the day, you want to know you’re working with someone who “gets” what it means to be struggling, right?

I get it because I’ve lived it myself. When I was 19 years old, I got out of my first relationship, but rather than moving on successfully, I experienced obsessive thoughts, longing, and fixation on this person for the next 12 years of my life. It wasn’t until my second experience of limerence, however, that I came to know the term and what was going on inside of me. Over my lifetime, I’ve experienced limerence multiple ways: unrequited longing, an unexpected and overwhelming infatuation for someone who wasn’t my partner, and even, mutual limerence that I was able to play out to its very end. From these experiences, I’ve learned how to work with and transmute limerence both as a researcher, therapist, and also as someone whose navigated it myself.  Turns out, healing from limerence and attachment wounds can be transformational, and now I want to help other individuals suffering so that they don’t have to be stuck for as long as I was.

Over the last 6 years, I have had a lot of experience working with trans and nonbinary clients around transitioning, identity, and mental health issues. I have a special connection to helping others who are struggling with identity because I have had to go through so many of my own struggles around identity in my life. The struggle around identity can be so confusing, isolating, and hard to put into words. And yet there is nothing more beautiful then when we are able to eventually re-write our narrative and reclaim our truth.

So, when we work together, you won’t just get a trained therapist. You will get someone who truly understands what you’re going through.

Education & Credentials:

• Licensed Mental Health Counselor
• License #: LH.60958162
• License State: Washington
• Practicing Since: 2015
• Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, University of Oregon
• Master of Arts in Mental Health Counseling, Antioch University of Seattle