Healthy Relationships
Care for PTSD and complex Trauma
related to issues of trust, attachment and safety
Emotional Regulation and Resilience
focused Parenting and Family Counseling
Evidence based Couple's Counseling
support for intimate partner violence
Anxiety
Depression
Emotional Regulation
Families
Couples
Intimate partner violence
Individual
Counseling
It takes connection with another, an intricate dance of safety and risk in order to heal our wounds. It is my honor to do that work with you. To support you as you find your way back to center. As you explore what it is like to feel whole.
Tapping into your own reserves of strength, empowerment and joy.
My approach is relational, trauma-informed, neuropsychological and attachment based. It is rooted in the present moment and in the wisdom of the body. It is system based. We will look at how the systems in your life impact you and your relationships, both internally and externally. And how that impacts your identity and self-worth.
Most importantly this is your work and I am here to join you as you continue your healing and growth.
Couples
Counseling
Wishing home were a quieter, softer place to land? Missing the playful moments of early courtship? Feeling as though you are saying the same things over and over? Yelling or screaming them at times? Feeling unheard, or as though you can never do anything right? Starting to close up because of the pain? Is trauma or a betrayal disrupting your connection. Struggling to rebuild trust? Uncertain what to do?
In our most intimate connections we often find some of our deepest hurts.
When we get stuck in patterns of distress, disconnection, distancing and fighting we often feel alone and overwhelmed.
However, in these same relationships is also the possibility of some of the deepest healing. My goal is to support you to find you way out of the same old cycle of fights and into new loving conversations. Secure connections and attachments allow us to become softer and allow our partners to come towards us. Our growing vulnerability and opening up allows our partners to settle and give us space. Widening the possibilities and giving us the choice of something new.
I use attachment based methods to support your work such as EFT (Emotional Focused Therapy) and have completed an EFT externship.
*Relational therapy is contraindicated in relationships where there are abusive uses of power and control. Family-system work is only appropriate when there is a base of equality, respect and safety. With folx who may be in abusive relationships, Trauma-informed, harm-reduction and client-empowered models of individual work are the best way to engage relational distress. And that is where the work should begin.
Parenting suppport
&
counseling
Families
Family can be our hearth and home and other times they can be a place of great challenge and frustration. Merging families, cultures, or dealing with the many extra events life and systems can hand us compounds this difficulty. Sometimes our families get stuck and need support to grow, and explore together in new ways. With help the old patterns can come unstuck and we can move together in new healthy, loving connections as we adventure in new ways.
Parenting
None of us are perfect
(Not our children, not our parents and not ourselves) and yet we can build strong, secure, loving relationships. I have a strong background in child development, family dynamics, and attachment. As a mom, step-mom, and a professional nanny for 15+years, I have seen that no two kids or parents are alike, we are all unique beings with our own needs and wants, likes and dislikes. We comes with our own pain points and our own beauty. Trauma, neurodivergence, and all kinds of differences can make it hard for us to know how to support someone who is so like us and yet so different. Learning to reparent yourself, and to do something new and different as you parent your children, is one way to a challenge the old pattern and to create something new.
Intimate partner violence
Do you feel foggy or confused about what is happening in your relationship? Or has someone referred you to this page and you are uncertain if you should be here? Or if this definition defines you? Maybe you feel solid and know that what is happening is not right, but you need help navigating your path. Either way, I am here to walk along side you as you navigate finding your own voice and wisdom.
The next step is yours and you don't have to do it alone.
If there are issues of abuse in your relationship. You are the best judge of what is best and safest for you, and no one has the right, or ability to tell you what to do. Issues of power and control are complicated and knowing what to do is not easy. My goal is to offer support, resources and a place to listen and find your own voice again.
ABOUT ME
I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. I earned my Masters in Psychology from LIOS the Seattle campus of Saybrook University. I trained at Seattle Therapy Alliance, now Mend Seattle. I have completed an externship in EFT emotionally focused couples therapy. Level One Lifespan Integration training for trauma and have completed multiple trainings on the therapeutic integration of domestic violence education, specific immigration issues and social justice. My Bachelors is in Communications and Art history from Trinity Western University in Langely, BC Canada. I am a reader, a researcher and I have a strong background in child development and attachment.
I am an introvert who loves community, being playful and finding joy. I am passionate about seeing and being seen, being honest and vulnerable. I am terrified by all of that, and yet I continue to pursue it.
My passion is holding space for those who have been hurt to find their center. For couples and families to find their home. Allowing the other the comfort and safety to come out and be fully seen. To hold the tensions together, the pain and the passion, the wounds and the celebrations, to find again the places of connection. To help mediate the anxiety as we move through the long process it takes a system to change its shape.
I am passionate about making shifts in the world of therapy, how it is practiced and engages in systemic oppression. It is my commitment to continue to learn, to continue to question, to address the gaps. To challenge my own whiteness. To work my own privilege and to stay engaged in the messy, difficult places where my own intersections smashes up together-the privilege and the disadvantage.
I am a ceremonialist. Ceremony is filled with symbolism and I am entranced by the emerging pattern. I am committed to presence-to a tended awareness of my body, the world and the way they merge together. I am dedicated to marking transitions, to hold sacred the space of transformation, and to doing it in culturally-affirming ways.
I love this work and am continually inspired and in awe of the resilience, creativity, empowerment and beauty of those who have been wounded, oppressed and made to feel voiceless. I am honored to be a part of the journey.
Sarah.Valrejean@Reclamationcc.com
206.485.4836
Locations:
19980 10th Ave. NE Poulsbo, WA
Currently all Seattle Sessions are online
Fees
$140 for 50 minutes
Insurance
In order to keep the practice client focused, I have chosen not to take Insurance at this time. This allows me to keep my time and energy focused on our relationship and the hands on work of therapy. Rather than spending my time on the paperwork and diagnostics that insurance would require. There are also various reasons why having a diagnosis in a chart may not be in the best interest of some clients. Historically mental health diagnoses have systemically been used against certain populations, and this allows me to give my clients a greater say in whether or not it is in their best interest to chart a mental health diagnosis.
Out of Network Provider, Health Savings Account and Sliding Scale
However: I do understand that insurance is sometimes the most accessible way to receive services. As such, I am an out of network Provider. If asked I can provide a monthly superbill for you to submit to your insurance. This will require a diagnosis given to your insurance. Please check with your insurance provider to see if they will reimburse you before starting sessions. I do not bill. If your insurance accepts me as an out of network provider you can submit the superbill for reinbursment of a portion of what you have paid out pocket. You can also often claim counseling sessions, including couples sessions, on a Health Savings Account. I also offer a sliding scale to those who would not otherwise be able to do this work. One of the missions of Reclamation Counseling and Consultation is to support survivors of gender-based violence. So this is my first goal with my sliding scale spots, but I am able to offer this to other clients as well if there are spaces. In order to do this work, I ask that you pay the full fee whenever possible and that we remain in conversation about financial shifts.
The Invitation
What sparks your passion?
What makes you feel alive,
connected,
safe?
Where are the places where your very bones
are sad and weeping,
trauma- pulsing through your system like fire, oscillating with deafening numbness?
Where are you breaking from the weight of oppression,
the dismantling of your very limbs?
What brings you back to life?
Causes you to move your feet,
your hands
once more;
to get up and rise again,
to begin anew,
an adventure yet unknown?
What is your resilience?
How have your dear ones survived?
What would allow you freedom,
connection and love?
The chance to trust again?
Where does your journey intersect with others?
For we are an intricate system, dependent on connection for survival,
and It is a political act to rise up and meet.
Changing one part of the system is where it begins.
We were never meant to be alone.
I believe this work is greater than the individual work, In community is how we change
but
this is where it starts...
For when we find our flower,
our own deeper, connected, consensual self than
we can find others.
What would allow you to bloom?
To open up
and thrive,
to find your life source,
your center,
the roots
the ground
As your buds begin to push out,
the leaves widening to the sun,
what will ignite your passion
embolden you as it softens you.
Where will your boldness meet your compassion?
How can we sit
together and learn to stay
long enough?
Long enough at the thresholds to see what will emerge.
when the death has decayed and
life begins again
to bloom?