About Sara
Sara Tinker, LCSW, works with people who are overwhelmed by stress and anxiety. She offers calm, steady support for relationship strain, grief, mood swings, and trauma. Her approach is practical and person-focused so parents reading on a phone can see what a session feels like: clear talk, concrete steps, and attention to feelings.
Sara has been a licensed clinical social worker for 26 years and practices in Tennessee. She draws on a long career that includes community mental health, adolescent psychiatric care, and independent practice started in 1992.
Background and approach
Those settings shaped how she listens and responds to problems like addiction, chronic illness, and family conflict. Her work blends attachment-based and client-centered ideas with elements of dialectical behavior therapy and emotionally-focused methods. That means she pays attention to relationship patterns, helps people find workable coping skills, and concentrates on strengthening emotional connection where it matters most.
Sara also brings experience with trauma-focused tools and somatic approaches that consider how the body holds stress. She often combines talking and body-aware methods to help people process painful memories and reduce ongoing symptoms such as trouble sleeping or intense anxiety. People who choose her can expect a warm, interactive style.
Sessions focus on building trust, exploring what matters, and creating small steps toward change. She respects each person's history and helps them use their strengths to move forward.
How her approaches work online and in sessions
Sara uses attachment-based work to look at how early and current relationship patterns shape reactions today. This approach helps people notice interaction cycles and try new ways of relating that reduce conflict and isolation.She also uses client-centered methods that put the person's experience first, offering a respectful, nonjudgmental space where needs and priorities guide each session. Alongside this, dialectical behavior therapy offers practical skills for managing intense emotions and improving coping in daily life.
Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the work. She collaborates with each person to decide which methods fit their needs, goals, and comfort level. That means trying options, checking in about what helps, and adjusting the plan together.
Online therapy with her is offered through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video helps with face-to-face conversation and reading emotional cues, phone calls can fit shorter check-ins or lower bandwidth, and messaging supports quick updates or ongoing reflections between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy family schedules, work breaks, or when travel would be difficult.
Questions people ask
What kinds of concerns does she address?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How long has she practiced clinically?
What credentials and location are listed?
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Experience
- 26 years
- Licensed
- Tennessee
- Languages
- English
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