Meet your therapist
Therapy is not about fixing you because you aren’t broken.
Its about helping you create a relationship with yourself that is healing and sustaining, for today and for tomorrow.
Sara Shihdanian, she/they LMHC in Washington, LPC in Oregon, LPCC in Minnesota
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I’ve always been passionate about personal empowerment and autonomy.
As a non-directive therapist, I trust my clients to bring to session what they are ready to address. We explore together to make change but I generally see my role as the navigator on our therapy road trip and you as the person in the drivers seat.
You’re the one who knows you best and you are the only expert on you, regardless of my expertise in mental health.
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Over the years, I've worked in several different settings including an inpatient and community mental health facilities. I interned and was employed at a women’s 6-month in-patient center for pregnant and parenting women. Later I helped launch the behavioral health department at an out-patient clinic for the greater community of those impacted by HIV.
Those roles gave me the chance to grow my skills clinically but they also helped me grow as a person. Seeing how powerful the relationship between substance use and trauma can be was one thing but it was another witnessing unbridled resilience in motherhood. Then working for three years under a gender therapist with lived experience, who was my supervisor, was incredible as a therapist and to serve my community but a first hand lesson in our history as well.
I have extensive experience working with people with complex and relational trauma, depression, anxiety, women's issues, life changes, relationship challenges, infectious disease, grief, and those facing systemic oppression. I’ve also completed the Certified Clinical Trauma Professional training, Cognitive Trauma Professional for PTSD training, Brainspotting Phase I and II, and am Washington State Telemedicine Training Certified.
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Therapy can be tough!
Opening up about deeply personal things is often uncomfortable, even if we are driven to let it out, get relief, even if we generally feel safe with the person we are sharing these thoughts and feelings with.
I always seek to provide you with a reliable and safe environment, no matter what we’re discussing; and to always be non-judgmental, authentic, compassionate, inclusive, and kind.
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I’m a queer, femme, late-diagnosed 2E, AuDHDer. I have a deep love of play, physical comedy, and am always seeking to fold silliness into our adult lives. As a mentor once said “Like a real millennial, my pets (cats) are my kids and my plants are my pets”.
Everyone has a story.
The challenge is knowing yours and then figuring out how to write it in a way that helps you get to where you want to go, instead of getting stuck in a story that keeps causing you pain. Sometimes even the smallest changes in the stories we tell ourselves have the power to reconfigure an entire lifetime.
Other times it can be just letting ourselves stay present with those stories until the intensity of the emotions starts to burn out, letting the emotions take their natural course of peaking and then passing on.
My perspective as your therapist, is that the important piece is figuring out what personal empowerment means to you, learning what stories, relationships, and things help keep you within arms reach of it, and then learning how to help you finally release the things that have been keeping you from it.
I know what’s like to take those first, scary, unpredictable steps. I know what it feels like to keep showing up and doing the work, especially on days when it feels like there’s nothing left in the tank.
While our experiences are different of course, my history with relational trauma, dysfunctional relationships, self doubt, and being a part of the LGBTQ+ community give me personal insight into what some of this might be like for you. This has also given me the chance to be a client struggling through those things.
Therapy during those times has given me the opportunity to have more support , to see myself in a new way, to let go of needing permission. I’ve also has some experiences with therapy that were just plain unhelpful too! But both sides of this help to inform how I approach you and my work.
Most importantly, this helps me to remain open to your feedback throughout our time together. That way our sessions can maintain uniquely tailored to what you need and it protects, and provides a structure for, the high level of quality and effectiveness that we both want for you in session.