About Sarah
Sarah Spurling greets people who feel worn out, overwhelmed, or stuck. She focuses on making therapy feel simple and manageable. Sarah wants clients to feel seen and to bring their real selves to sessions without pressure to perform.
Her style is relational and supportive. She aims to build a trusting connection first, then work on practical steps that match a person’s life. Sessions emphasize understanding patterns, learning coping tools, and pacing change so it doesn’t feel overwhelming.
How Sarah works
Sarah uses approaches that blend acceptance, present-moment awareness, and skill building. She draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy to help people notice thoughts, choose values-based action, and manage strong emotions. Client-Centered ideas guide the way she listens and responds.
She has three years of clinical experience and holds an LCSW, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, in Illinois. That background informs her attention to both immediate coping and longer-term meaning in life. People bring many concerns to her work: stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, grief, and struggles with self-esteem.
Additional focus areas include attachment and abandonment issues, body image, caregiver stress, chronic illness and pain, codependency, communication difficulties, dissociation, family of origin concerns, first responder issues, gender dysphoria, and related challenges. Sarah offers sessions in English using a mix of formats. She aims to help people feel a bit steadier between appointments and to build skills that fit day-to-day life.
Sarah lists 12 ways of working on the entry:
What Sarah works with
The areas below are the ones Sarah selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dissociation
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- First responder issues
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LCSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 3 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Illinois |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Approaches that guide online sessions
Sarah uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help people notice difficult thoughts and feelings and choose actions that match their values. This approach is useful when someone wants to build a life that feels meaningful even when emotions are hard to change. Client-Centered Therapy shapes how she listens and responds, focusing on empathy and respect so people can speak honestly and be heard. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is also part of the mix and offers concrete techniques for shifting unhelpful thoughts and small behaviors that maintain anxiety or low mood.Finding the right mix of methods is part of therapy. She will collaborate with each person to figure out which approaches fit their needs, goals, and preferences. That means checking in about what feels helpful and adjusting the plan as work progresses.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is good for a fuller conversation and skills practice, while phone sessions can work well when bandwidth is limited or a quieter check-in is needed. Live chat and text messages make brief check-ins and homework exchanges easier between sessions. These options make it simpler to fit therapy into a busy schedule and to use methods that match how a person prefers to communicate.
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Common questions
What kinds of concerns does Sarah help with?
What is her general therapy style?
How much clinical experience does she have?
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A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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