You don’t have to make yourself simpler to make sense here.
Sara works with individuals and couples whose relationships, sexuality, identities, or ways of experiencing the world may not fit neatly into one category. Many of the people who find their way to her are dealing with several things at once—relationship distress, intimacy concerns, neurodivergence, trauma, health challenges, identity, or major life transitions.
She has a warm, highly relational style and an unusually sharp eye for patterns. Sara listens closely to what people say, what they avoid, and the places where a story or relationship dynamic does not quite fit. She wants to understand the whole picture before deciding what the problem actually is.
focus
Sexuality • Relationships • Identity • Neurodivergence • Narcissistic Abuse
DEPTH WORK
Sex Therapy • Imago • Attachment • Narrative Therapy • Systemic Therapy
CLIENTS
Individuals • Couples • LGBTQIA+ • ENM / Poly • Neurodivergent Adults
Feeling understood can make it safe enough to look at what's true.
I want people to feel safe enough to be honest—and understood well enough to be challenged.
I work systemically, which means I’m rarely looking at one person, one symptom, or one explanation in isolation. I’m paying attention to the relationships around you, your attachment history, past trauma, sexuality, health, identity, neurodivergence, family and cultural influences, and the patterns that connect them.
In couples work, I’m also watching what happens between people: who pursues, who withdraws, what gets avoided, what changes when a certain subject comes up, and whether the story being told actually fits the relationship I’m seeing.
If something doesn’t quite fit, I don’t rush past it.
Sometimes the work calls for slowing everything down so each person can finally feel heard. Other times I may ask questions quickly and directly, notice an inconsistency, or stay with a detail that seems more important than it first appears.
I’m not looking for someone to blame. I’m trying to understand what is true enough that we can actually work with it.
I also don’t assume that difference equals dysfunction. Partners can experience emotion, desire, sensory input, conflict, intimacy, and connection very differently—especially in neurodivergent or mixed-neurotype relationships. Understanding those differences often changes how we look at the problem.
Your relationship and sex life don’t happen separately.
People make more sense when we stop separating the parts of them that were never truly separate.
Relationship concerns and sexual concerns often get divided into separate treatment tracks. Sara is trained in both couples therapy and sex therapy, which means the work does not have to stop at an artificial boundary.
Desire can be affected by resentment. Sexual pain can change attachment. Neurodivergence can shape sensory experience and communication. Betrayal can show up in the bedroom. Health problems, trauma, shame, conflict, hormones, identity, and the quality of the relationship itself can all interact.
Sara’s whole-picture lens is also informed by her holistic perspective. She does not tend to see the physical body, emotional life, psychology, relationships, and spirituality as separate compartments. Each can affect the others, and sometimes the place where a problem appears is not the place where it began.
When the same therapist understands the whole picture, we can follow the problem wherever it actually goes.
01 — The relationship is the client
Sara is not only treating two individuals who happen to be in the same room. She is also paying attention to the relationship they create together—the cycle between them, the injuries they carry, the ways they reach for one another, and the patterns that keep repeating.
02 — Sex is part of the relationship system
Desire, arousal, avoidance, initiation, rejection, sexual pain, and compatibility do not happen in isolation. They can reflect attachment, resentment, trust, health, trauma, sensory needs, communication, and the emotional life of the relationship itself.
03 — One difference can ripple through the whole system
Neurodivergence can shape how someone experiences communication, sensory input, conflict, affection, desire, touch, and sexual expression. A difference that appears in one part of the relationship may be affecting several others. Sara looks for those connections rather than treating each problem in isolation.
What brings you in may be only one part of the story. We can start there.
01
Recurring relationship cycles, disconnection, betrayal, attachment injuries, and anxious, avoidant, or disorganized patterns that make closeness difficult.
02
Desire differences, sexual pain, intimacy, sexual compatibility, shame, sexual trauma, and difficulty feeling connected in the bedroom.
03
Autism, ADHD, masking, mixed-neurotype relationships, sensory differences, identity, and understanding ways of experiencing the world that may have been misunderstood before.
04
Attachment trauma, religious trauma, abuse, betrayal, and experiences that continue to shape safety, identity, relationships, or the way someone sees themselves.
05
Health, Body & Life Changes
Chronic pain, disability, hypermobility. complex health issues, fertility, postpartum experiences, and changes that affect the body, identity, sexuality, or relationship.
06
Altered States & Integration
Ketamine-assisted therapy, psychedelic integration, spiritual or unusual experiences, and making sense of what emerges when your usual way of understanding yourself begins to shift.
Understanding is useful. Knowing what to do next matters too.
Sara is honest, direct, and highly practical. She teaches when teaching helps, gives structure when a conversation needs it, and is comfortable getting very specific about what to try differently.
You can tell Sara the thing you have been carefully avoiding saying out loud. She will probably respond as calmly as if you had just asked her to solve for x.
She is also interested in what happens after something changes. Sometimes a carefully chosen intervention tells us more than another hour of debating competing versions of the story.
Change the conditions, make the healthier path clear, and people often show you what they are actually working with.
Honest, Upfront & Comfortable With the Truth
Sara does not make clients guess what she is seeing. She can be warm and deeply connected while still naming something directly when it matters. Clients have described her as honest and upfront.
Structure When You’re Stuck
When people get stuck, Sara changes the conversation. She may slow things down, provide sentence stems, structure an exchange, teach a specific communication process, or give partners a concrete way to approach the issue differently.
Let the Pattern Show Itself
Sara does not always need to decide whose explanation is right. Sometimes she changes the relationship dynamic and pays close attention to what happens next. Empathy, flexibility, accountability, avoidance, entitlement, defensiveness, or genuine effort—the pattern often becomes much easier for everyone in the room to see.
Make It Work Outside the Room
Insight matters most when you can use it. Sara naturally translates what happens in therapy into specific ways of communicating, making decisions, repairing ruptures, navigating transitions, or changing what happens at home.
You shouldn’t have to explain why your life is legitimate before we can talk about it.
Sexuality, identity, neurodivergence, relationship structure, spirituality, and culture are context—not obstacles we have to get past.
Sara works comfortably with LGBTQIA+ clients, neurodivergent people and mixed-neurotype couples, kink and BDSM, polyamory and ethical non-monogamy, unconventional relationship structures, and people navigating sexuality or identity alongside religious or cultural expectations.
You do not need to spend the beginning of therapy teaching her why your relationship counts, why your brain works the way it does, or why something that matters to you should be taken seriously.
Acceptance gives us room to look more clearly at what is actually happening.
Sara can respect the relationship structure, identity, sexuality, or worldview you bring into the room while still helping you examine consent, boundaries, honesty, attachment, compatibility, power, and whether what is happening actually works for the people involved.
Clinical training is only part of the education underneath the work.
Before becoming a therapist, Sara spent years studying how people create meaning, tell stories, make arguments, and understand themselves through language. That academic background still shows up in the therapy room—especially in the way she teaches, asks questions, and helps clients turn insight into something they can actually use.
01 — Clinical Education & Certification
- Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
- AASECT Certified Sex Therapist
- Certified Imago Relationship Therapist
- M.A. in Counseling, St. Edward’s University
- Sexual Health Alliance training
- Sexual Attitude Reassessment training (SAR)
02 — Academic Background
- Ph.D. in English / Creative Writing
- MFA in Creative Writing
- M.A. in Creative Writing
- B.A. in English & History / Plan I Honors, The University of Texas at Austin
03 — Teaching & Mentorship
- Former Columbia University Undergraduate Writing Program instructor
- Former Marymount Manhattan instructor
- Former Texas Tech graduate instructor
- Recipient of a Columbia University award for outstanding mentorship and community impact
Those years of teaching still shape the therapy room. Sara naturally translates complicated ideas into clear language and helps clients turn understanding into something they can actually use.
Her work with relationships and sexuality extends beyond the therapy room.
Sara has been writing, teaching, and thinking publicly about sexuality, relationships, identity, and culture for years. Her expertise has been featured in national publications covering everything from intimacy and communication to kink, infidelity, and sexual health.
As Featured In
THE RIGHT FIT MATTERS
Sometimes the right therapist isn’t Sara. What matters is finding the clinician who makes the most sense for what you actually need.
ACT works with adults, couples, throuples, and poly/ENM relationships. We do not work with children or teens, and we do not try to be everything to everyone.
Over the years, we’ve developed relationships with therapists and specialists throughout Austin whose work we know and trust. If someone outside ACT is a stronger fit, we’re happy to point you toward the people we believe do excellent work.
Marc Geronimo
LMFT-A, CHT
Consciousness Specialist • Trauma • Hypnotherapy • Couples • Altered States • Ketamine Therapy
common questions
Because Sara’s schedule is often full, she generally does not offer separate introductory calls before beginning therapy. Most clients start by scheduling an initial session.
If you have a few questions before scheduling, Sara is happy to answer them by text when she can. If you’re unsure whether she is the right fit, the ACT team can also help you think through what you’re looking for—and, when appropriate, recommend another therapist or specialist whose work we know and trust.
Yes. Sara works with both individuals and couples.
Individual work may focus on relationships, sexuality, neurodivergence, attachment, trauma, identity, chronic health concerns, major life transitions, or patterns that keep showing up across different parts of life.
Couples work allows her to pay attention not only to each partner, but to the relationship they create together.
Yes. This is one of the distinctive parts of Sara’s work.
She is trained in both couples therapy and sex therapy, so relationship concerns and sexual concerns do not have to be split into separate treatment tracks. Desire, resentment, attachment, communication, sexual pain, trust, sensory differences, health, and intimacy can all affect one another.
Sara can follow the problem wherever it actually leads.
That is very common.
Couples rarely arrive with identical levels of motivation, insight, frustration, or hope. Sara pays attention to what each person is bringing into the room and to the pattern happening between them.
Sometimes the work involves slowing things down and creating more safety. Sometimes it means giving the couple very specific structure. And sometimes changing one part of the pattern helps everyone see more clearly what is actually happening.
No.
What brings you in may be only one part of the story. You may know that sex has changed, communication feels impossible, resentment is building, something feels wrong, or you simply do not feel like yourselves anymore.
That is enough to begin.
Sara’s job is not to make you choose the correct category before therapy starts. It is to help understand how the pieces connect—and then figure out what to do next.