Hi. I’m Sandra.
A licensed mental health counselor specializing in the provision of faith-based care for individual adult Catholics and Christians.
If you’ve found your way here, you are likely looking for something more than traditional psychotherapy has offered you before.
Welcome to a different approach.
Why work with me?
I look at life through the lens of story. This means I am looking at setting, themes, plot, conflict, and characters. I am reading my story and yours as two stories intersecting in time, where we share a space and a relationship. Where our lives touch one another. In my role as therapist, you are the protagonist of your story, and I am a character in it. I am a character who serves as an expert companion and guide.
When I read your story, I am reading through the lens of psychology and my experience as a therapist. My general approach is trauma-informed and psychodynamic. This means I am sensitive to your wounds, interested in how you acquired them, and how you have coped through the years. People I have helped say they value my compassion, non-judgment, and understanding. I also use a blend of evidence-based treatments and interventions to address symptoms.
Because I am a pastoral counselor as well as a therapist, I am interested in the ways I find God in your story. When I read your story, I am also referencing the story of Christ to help us understand things about your story. To help us read not only the human interpretation of the story, but also what we can know of how God sees and does things when He is writing His part of your story.
As Christians, we have been baptized into the life and death of Christ. This serves as a way for us to find meaning in our stories, especially in the suffering. The elements of your story that involve crisis, conflict, or trauma – things that would bring you here to me – are significant in that they create pain for you, but also in that they urge you to respond. They demand that you make a choice about what happens next.
In stories, crisis and conflict move the story forward. When we are talking about our lives as stories, we know that God, as an author, is writing His part to move us to a specific end. The end He desires for us is eternal union with Him. Yet it is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). Along the way, we spend our lives grappling with these hardships, journeying through a process of change known as conversion. The process involves growth, maturation, and healing through our embrace of truth. Throughout this process, God works to help us, providing what we need.
As your companion and guide, I am interested in you. I’m interested in your life and in fostering your movement forward. I have devoted my life to this work and am passionate to support you in this chapter of your story, where growth, change, and new life are possible.
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8:28
My Story
When I was about to do something else with my life, I met a homeless man at my church. Years before, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia while in prison after military service. Dressed in dirty, oversized clothes, with a necktie holding up his pants, he approached me in a chapel where I prayed before Mass. Looking away from the crucifix I was praying with, I realized he was another version of Christ leaning in the doorway. I learned his story when I asked what had happened, gesturing to his appearance.
He was waiting for the parish outreach to find him a place to live. While he waited, we became friends, chatting daily after Mass. I felt at ease because I knew something about psychosis having studied it in grad school, and I knew he was taking his medication. As the weeks of that summer passed, he took greater care of himself and grew closer to me. He told me I should become a psychiatric social worker. I said I’m only doing this for you, I’m planning something else. Then my spiritual director said don’t dismiss his words, discern them.
When my friend was secure in his new life, I relapsed with an illness I’d been battling for years and was debilitated for a long time. My doctor said, you cannot do what you were going to do. Your body can’t do it.
After a year of prayerful discernment, I pursued what it seemed God was asking of me. My conscience reminded me that I had already spent my life collecting observations and experiences that would help me to understand the human condition in the particular way I do. Every crisis and conflict, leading me through choice after choice to the place where I found myself with a broad and deep knowledge of human suffering. I was also reminded it is not only for my sake that God permitted or ordained what I have passed through and come to know. He reminded me that the Spirit of God is given uniquely to each person for the good of all (1 Corinthians 12:7). That same Spirit has led me here for God to use all things to work toward the good for those who love Him.
Professional Background
New York State Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Rhode Island Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Massachusetts Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Posttraumatic Growth (PTG) Certified by Boulder Crest Institute
Master Mentor at CatholicPsych Institute
Master of Arts in Pastoral Counseling and Spiritual Care from Fordham University
Master of Arts in Psychology from Duquesne University
Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Stony Brook University
