About Me
I am a complex trauma and dissociation therapist! My clinical specializations include childhood trauma, Complex/PTSD, complex dissociation, complex family dynamics, anxiety, depression, processes of grief, healing perfectionism, and promoting integration between the mind and body. I work with you to help you access the internal resourcing within in aim of promoting a healthy self-concept. Working collaboratively to assist you in reaching your best emotional, mental, and spiritual alignment is the focus of my practice and my writing. I practice from a bottom-up approach while looking through a psychodynamic, trauma- and attachment-focused lens to help you heal your internal wounds and find safety within. As many of us are, I, too, am on my own healing journey. I understand the complexity of wanting alignment and certainty, to the point of necessity and just how important the experience of feeling ourselves is.
I am the owner of a trauma specialty private practice called Peony Path Psychotherapy. At this time, I am EMDR trained (2022) and have completed extensive training in applying EMDR to complex trauma presentations and those that experience complex dissociation (2022-2023). I am also trained in the application of Clinical Hypnosis (Level 1; 2022), and Ego State Therapy (Level 1; 2023).
I am also a forensic mental health consultant and help criminal defense attorneys with cases that are psychologically complex, particularly those where untreated trauma, dissociation, attachment, anxiety, depression, postpartum transition, coercion, or other psychological factors may provide important context for a client's history, presentation, or behavior, insight, judgement, and motive.
In my blog, you will meet the Spirals of Healing—passageways that can feel eerily similar or reflective of past trauma but are the only routes to healing. By moving through them, we can find our way out of the trauma and into ourselves even though it will feel just as hard if not harder than having endured the trauma, itself. Along with exploring these spirals of healing, I will be offering ego state scripts and integrative exercises, aimed to help you to interact with the various parts / internal experiences that may show up inside of you throughout the process.
When I am not working with clients, my (other) anchors include, arranging as many flower bouquets as I can around the house (even when it breaks the budget), followed by continued interior design (which continues to break the budget), running, cooking new recipes, lots of charcuterie boards (like you wouldn’t believe) and keeping up with my fur child. I invite you to keep some of your anchors nearby as you read through the Spirals, noticing how as you move through each Spiral, you may begin to feel closer and closer to yourself and closer and closer to feeling yourself.
-Sarah Vassileff, MA, LCPC
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