“What we need is a culture where the common experience of trauma leads to a normalization of healing. Being able to say: I have good reasons to be scared of the dark, of raised voices, of being swallowed up by love, of being alone…The expectation should be: I know we are all in need of healing, so how are we doing our healing work?
-adrienne maree brown
Sarah VanHolland, MC, LPC, she/her
Sarah believes we all seek love, acceptance, and belonging. When experiences lead us to internalize a shame message that we are not enough or too much, we can develop ways of interacting with the world that, though helpful in the past, no longer work for us (or may even be harmful). It is her privilege to join with you in your process of exploring these negative messages and to begin accepting yourself, as you are: Both imperfect and worthy of love and belonging.
The counseling process isn’t always comfortable. Sarah will work with you to create a space where you can learn to feel safe, present in your body, and secure. She uses a relationship/client-centered, skills-based approach, helping you reconnect with your true, vibrant self. She likes to balance joy and laughter within the counseling process and models bringing her full, imperfect-and-worthy self into the counseling process. Learning some new skills to increase emotion regulation, you can begin to address how past experiences are impacting current distress with curiosity and compassion.
Sarah earned a Masters in Community Counseling from Arizona State University and is independently licensed in the state of Arizona. She’s been providing outpatient counseling services since 2007 in a variety of settings and is bilingual in Spanish. She has received extensive training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and is also trained in EMDR with additional education in dissociation and complex trauma. Because our understanding of the ways we can heal is constantly evolving, Sarah is not only committed to ongoing training and learning, but to her own therapy and care as well.
Sarah’s education in community counseling has encouraged her to shift away from the medical model commonly used to train practitioners to ‘treat’ mental health. The refusal to pathologize pain and traumatic experience through labels/diagnosis is a core tenant of her treatment philosophy; she sees the whole human in the context of their lived experiences. As such, Sarah does not see herself or others as broken, in need of fixing, or saving. She is excited to reflect back to you your own inherent wisdom, peace, autonomy, and fullness.
Sarah takes on a limited number of clients in order to be able to provide attentive and quality care. She specializes in working with adolescents age 14 and older, adults, and families experiencing anxiety/depression, self-harm/suicidality, risk-taking behaviors, relationship instability and distress, parenting issues and the parent-child relationship, trans affirming care of gender dysphoria, and trauma-related emotion dysregulation (often labeled Borderline Personality Disorder or Mood Disorders).
If you are interested in scheduling with Sarah, please email sarah.vanholland@gmail.com or call 480-434-9552.
Specialities:
Borderline Personality Disorder/Traumatic-loss and Attachment trauma
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Cutting/Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideation
Depression/Anxiety
Brainspotting
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Family of origin and relationship issues: Boundaries, Codependency, and Attachment-issues.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Complex-PTSD and accompanying dissociative experiences
Trans and gender affirming care/Sexuality and Gender issues.
Spiritual Distress & Integration
