Sarah Spurling, LCSW

Sarah Spurling is a licensed clinical social worker who helps people feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or emotionally stuck. She meets people where they are and focuses on practical steps that make daily life feel more manageable. Her approach aims to slow racing thoughts, boost motivation, and help people feel more present. Sarah uses a relational, supportive style that centers the therapeutic relationship. She aims to create a space where someone can show up without pretending to be fine or having every answer. Sessions emphasize understanding how past experiences shape current patterns and building coping tools that fit real life. She draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and client-centered approaches to tailor work to each person. That can mean identifying unhelpful thinking, practicing new behaviors, or clarifying values and goals. Skills-based work and short exercises are mixed with time to talk through feelings and experiences. Her background includes three years as a licensed clinical social worker, Illinois LCSW. She offers individual and group formats and brings a straightforward, compassionate tone to sessions. People who want a collaborator rather than a fixer often find this style useful. Sarah focuses on stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, grief, self-esteem, and LGBT concerns. She also addresses related struggles such as attachment and abandonment, body image, caregiver stress, chronic illness and pain, codependency, dissociation, and family of origin issues.

Therapeutic approaches and online care

Sarah uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. CBT often involves short, practical exercises and experiments that you can try between sessions to see what helps reduce worry and improve daily functioning. She also draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which focuses on clarifying personal values and building psychological flexibility. ACT encourages learning to live with difficult thoughts while taking meaningful action toward goals that matter. Client-Centered Therapy is part of her approach too, which means sessions prioritize empathy and understanding so people feel heard. That helps make skills work feel relevant and grounded in each person’s life. Finding the right approach is a team effort. She will talk with each person about their goals and preferences and then adapt methods as needed. The plan can shift over time based on what proves helpful in sessions and in day-to-day life. Online therapy offers several practical benefits for this work. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and teaching of skills, phone sessions are useful when bandwidth is limited or when you prefer not to be on camera, and live chat or text-based messaging can support brief check-ins or skill practice between sessions. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to continue momentum between appointments.