sarah barukh, acsw

As human beings, we encounter so many emotional challenges and struggles, both personally and in our relationships. My purpose as a therapist is to help you connect with your sense of agency and foster meaningful relationships with yourself and others. I hope that through our work together, you’ll come to feel that life isn’t just happening to you, but that you are actively making decisions that are in alignment with your values. I want to help you recognize that whatever you are going through, you don’t have to go through it alone. Personally, I feel most myself when I experience genuine connection with others and I want those who work with me to experience the magic of this as well.

Therapy is about being seen for all that we are and all that we can be. This means embracing one’s identities and past experiences and making them an integral part of the work. Coming from a social work background, I think it’s especially important to recognize how systems and institutions impact how we see ourselves and how we move through the world. In this vein, I’m excited to work with women and femmes who are reclaiming their agency and voice, especially those working through internalized oppression or unrealistic societal expectations.

I also specialize in working with individual and relationship therapy clients who are managing challenging familial relationships—folks with complex family dynamics, including those who’ve experienced parentification, enmeshment, or estrangement in their families of origin. Sometimes called “relational trauma,” “attachment trauma,” or “C-PTSD,” traumatic early childhood environments shape how we see the world, our felt sense of safety in relationships, and our willingness to engage vulnerably with others. As someone who has struggled with anxiety since childhood, I deeply understand the challenges of navigating anxiety and anxious attachment, and want to help you build security in yourself and your relationships. Like many of my clients, I know what it’s like to live with anxiety—and I know that healing is possible.

I’m not interested in therapy that furthers harm and I do not believe that mental health care should be one size fits all. Before becoming a therapist, I worked in political and labor organizing—and I carry these values into the therapy room. I don’t believe in pathologizing people for the ways they’ve learned to cope in an unjust world. Instead, my work is guided by anti-oppressive, trauma-informed, and relational principles that view coping patterns that may no longer be serving you as essential and creative ways that you cared for yourself in an environment that wasn’t supportive of you.

Let’s work together to help you embrace your (very) human struggles with gentleness and compassion, integrate and affirm all parts of you to feel more whole, and foster meaningful relationships where you get to be fully YOU!