About Sara
Sara Van Slyke is a licensed mental health counselor with 13 years of professional experience. She practices with warmth and straightforwardness, helping people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, addiction concerns, and issues like low self-esteem and motivation. Sara affirms that clients are the experts on their own lives and builds on the strengths they already have.
She uses practical, easy-to-follow strategies in sessions. Conversations focus on what feels most urgent to the client and on small steps that bring relief.
Background and approach
Sara listens without judgment and helps people sort priorities, plan changes, and try different coping tools. Sara draws from several therapy approaches, including client-centered work, cognitive behavioral therapy, and mindfulness techniques. She blends these methods to match each person’s needs instead of applying a single formula.
Sessions may include talking through thoughts, trying new behaviors, and practicing simple mindfulness exercises. Her experience includes supporting people through life transitions, grief, relationship stress, trauma and abuse, anger, parenting pressures, eating concerns, bipolar mood challenges, and ADHD-related struggles. She aims to make sessions understandable and useful in everyday life.
Sara is licensed as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, LMHC, in Florida and Washington. She offers sessions in English and provides care through video calls, phone, live chat, and text messaging to fit different schedules and preferences.
How therapy approaches translate to online sessions
Client-centered therapy places the client’s experience at the center of each session. The therapist listens closely, reflects what she hears, and follows the client’s lead to set goals and priorities; this approach helps when someone needs a compassionate space to talk through problems.Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at connections between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In online sessions this often means identifying unhelpful thinking patterns, trying small behavioral experiments between meetings, and using simple worksheets or exercises during video calls or messaging.
Dialectical behavior therapy, DBT, teaches practical skills for managing intense emotions and improving interpersonal effectiveness. Online work can focus on short skills practice, tracking progress with brief messages, and using phone or video check-ins for skills coaching.
Finding the right fit is a collaborative process. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t worked before, then recommend approaches to try together. Adjustments are made as needed so the plan stays relevant to the client’s needs.
Online sessions offer real flexibility. Video calls let people read facial cues and use shared worksheets. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a camera isn’t desired. Live chat and text-based messaging allow for shorter check-ins, written reflection, and easier scheduling around work or family commitments. Licensed professionals can combine these formats to make therapy fit everyday life.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
Also listed
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Grief
- Intimacy-related issues
- Parenting issues
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 13 years
- Licensed
- Florida, Washington
- Languages
- English
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