What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose.
All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
—Helen Keller
Meet Sarah Koch-Schiller, Therapist Specializing in Grief & Trauma
I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with 16 years of experience providing psychotherapy to adults and teens. I obtained my masters degree in counseling psychology in 2004. I have worked in a variety of settings, including community counseling agencies, schools and colleges, Hospice, and private practice. While I am a general practitioner, I specialize in supporting people who are grieving.
As a therapist, I am often asked why I chose to do the work I do. The reality is that I was drawn to death and dying work long before I understood it. As a child, the veil between life and death felt thin, and I was often engaging with the world through an existential lens. I’ve spent countless hours exploring the feelings, changes and transformations that we endure through loss. It is my greatest honor to walk along with my clients as they navigate their own journeys.
My Approach to Therapy
I I am a relational therapist, meaning I deeply value the healing connection between client and therapist. I offer a warm, attuned presence and work collaboratively with you to to uncover, heal, integrate and transform. Our work together is a shared journey, guided by intuition and respect for your unique pace and desires.
At the heart of my practice is a depth-oriented approach — one that seeks to understand not just the symptoms you’re facing, but the emotional patterns, attachment relationships, and unconscious beliefs that lie beneath them. Our work can bring awareness to deeper aspects of self, and create space for new understanding, healing, and ways of being.
While my foundation is in depth psychotherapy, I draw from a rich blend of therapeutic frameworks to meet you where you are:
• Mindfulness and somatic focusing help you slow down and tune into the sensations and emotions in your body. So often we live only in our mind. By getting to know what is held in our body, we can calm our nervous system, and create groundedness and safety in our lives.
• Attachment-Focused EMDR weaves together trauma processing, relational attunement, and emotional safety as a way to create internal resourcing and healing from trauma.
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps develop awareness of thought patterns, beliefs, and behaviors that no longer serve you. CBT offers practical tools for shifting unhelpful thinking and behavior.
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) offers a compassionate lens for understanding the different “parts” within you - the protective parts, wounded parts, shadowed parts - helping to unearth and create space for all aspects of self.
Whether you are navigating grief, trauma, relationship challenges, anxiety, depression, or a sense of disconnection from yourself, my intention is to walk beside you — with presence and care — as you move toward greater wholeness.
