Welcome

Being a psychotherapist opens my mind and heart and sense of being.  I stay with my patients over the long-term, as we work together through what they bring into treatment. I bring a receptive, thoughtful, empathic, and creative mind to the task, and I am interested in the day to day as well as the dynamics of our interior lives. 

This approach to psychotherapy offers an alternative to the external demands and pressures that can obscure thought and feeling, or relegate genuine contact with our minds to small pockets of availability here and there. In this way of life, it can be difficult to experience a sense of continuity or purpose. I believe a psychoanalytic approach offers an opportunity for exploration and for meaningful, durable change that aligns one's felt experience and expression in the outside world.

Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, I worked in non-profit and healthcare organizations. I have had an abiding interest in "walking the talk" throughout my career, beginning in urban and rural outreach, and continuing in the challenging intersections among sexuality, gender, power, and religion. Closely related, I've worked in the intersections of culture, race, nationality, and class structures. And often, with trauma. I approach my work with  humility, vigor, and genuine interest in being helpful.

These attitudes weave throughout my career. For six years, I served as an associate pastor, primarly focused on work with teens and families, and on pastoral care. Following advanced clinical training at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center and with Johns Hopkins Hospital, I worked as part of an interdisciplinary team in palliative and hospice care. For the following nine years, I visited patients and their loved ones at home, including many patients living in isolation in their homes,  all in the midst of patients' final days, weeks, and months. I provided bereavement support for losses, both ones foreseen and others, complex.

Ongoing education and training continues to enrich my practice. In addition to my masters degrees in divinity and in counseling, I have completed advanced training with the Washington Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute. I have been in private practice for ten years, and am licensed in Maryland, Washington, DC, and North Carolina.

Along with psychotherapy, I offer supervision for licensed graduate counselors and consultation for professional colleagues.

Sarah Diehl