Welcome

Being a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and supervisor is not always easy, but this work 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 dynamics of our interior lives.

This kind of work 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, making it difficult to experience a sense of continuity or purpose.  I believe it also offers a real  opportunity for meaningful, durable change.

Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, I worked in non-profit and healthcare sectors. I have had an abiding interest in "walking the talk," engaging in urban and rural outreach, and in the challenging intersections among sexuality, gender, power, and religion. I approach my work with  humility, vigor, and genuine care and interest in people's lives.

These values 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 families at home, 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 am an advanced candidate of the Washington Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute. I have been in private practice for ten years, and am licensed in Maryland, with licensure pending in Washington, DC and in North Carolina.

Sarah Diehl