HOME

Welcome to My Website

I know there are a lot of therapists to choose from in the Asheville area and appreciate your taking the time to see if I might be a good fit. Please contact me for a free 15-minute phone consultation if: 

You prefer a therapist who listens more than she speaks.

Rest assured, I will speak when I think that what I have to say — or how I say it — will be helpful. But the main point of the therapy I practice (modern psychoanalysis) is for you to talk. What you experience, the thoughts you have, the way you feel about things…all of that is very important to me. Especially the feelings part. We’ve all been conditioned to not say how we really feel, and especially not while we’re actually feeling it! Therapy is an open invitation to do otherwise. It’s incredibly enlivening and can change a person forever.

You don’t want to feel judged.

Whatever your troubles are, they could have just as easily been mine. We are all the results of nature and nurture combining — temperament and relationship. Two things over which we have no control as infants and children, even as adolescents and teens. We all do our best with what we’ve been given. Seeking a therapist is yet more proof that you are really trying to thrive, now that you do have more control over your conditioning because you’re an adult.

You’re curious about your childhood.

I’m definitely going to ask you about that sometimes! The past persists until we become more aware of its echoes.

You’re interested in your brain, and how your mind can change it.

I’m a big fan of mindfulness. For clients who are interested, I love to start sessions with a five-minute meditation. I also encourage many clients to develop a regular practice of slow, mindful yoga. And I love Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a way to talk about and experience separating from thoughts, or defusing from them, and thereby rewiring the brain so it’s more friend than foe. 

You appreciate spirituality.

I don’t identify with any religion enough to say that I am Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or Jewish or anything else. But I respect religion immensely (both for the good it can do and for the bad), and I do adore what comprises the stripped-away core of all religions — spirituality — which can be defined as transcending the various ways we’ve been conditioned to think, feel, and behave. Each of us already possesses (inside, within) everything we need to flourish and stop taking our experience so personally. For most of us, it’s really a matter of trying less, not more, to access that inner love and wisdom.

You appreciate irreverence.

Life can be cruel and absurd and sometimes we must laugh in its face.   

You enjoy writing or would like to try it again.

I’ve always loved, loved, loved to write, and I believe 100% in the healing potential of journal therapy. I will gladly provide customized take-home writing prompts to clients who want them, so they might continue to deepen their self-knowledge between sessions.

You’d like more information about me.

The best way to determine if a therapist might be your therapist is to experience how you feel when talking to him/her/them. So don’t hesitate to schedule a pressure-free phone consultation by emailing sarahsimpsoncounseling@gmail.com or calling 919-805-4096. Also, take your time in exploring the rest of my website.

Congrats on starting this journey!