About Me
I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a myriad of experience in and out of the therapy room. I am most passionate about offering lived and clinical experience support related to topics including racial justice, neurodivergence, fat liberation, teen mental health, and DBT. I work to honor my own lived experience and the lived experiences of other marginalized folks to promote ethical and just mental health care.
With a background in individual and group therapy; team leadership; podcasting; consultation, training and speaking; and activism, I’m always looking for new ways to channel my energy into effective change. I’d love to help you do the same!
People describe me as direct, wicked smart, easy to talk to, authentic, and capable of a great deal of nuance. I always endeavor to be creative, silly, human, and compassionate.
Work with me and we will engage in a deep and transformative exploration of your needs, values, and resources.
I’m Sabrina
My story
Born and mostly raised on Mánu: Yį Įsuwą (Catawba), Lumbee Skaruhreh/Tuscarora, Cheraw, Occaneechi, and Shakori lands (colonially known as the Triangle Area of North Carolina), I obtained my bachelor's in Psychology from North Carolina Central University and my masters in Social Work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
But lets back up, there’s way more to the story!
I knew from a young age that I wanted to help people, though I struggled with knowing how. I admired my own therapist though struggled to see myself as being able to give advice when I felt so disconnected, alone, and out of control myself. As an adopted, fat, Black, undiagnosed Neurodivergent young woman with a deeply unsupportive family, I worried I could never help anyone in the way that I had needed help.
Despite those insecurities, psychology was deeply interesting to me from the moment I took my first psychology class in high school. “This is interesting enough to study for four more years,” was my mantra.
Part of the way through my undergraduate studies, my caring and thoughtful therapist worked with me to understand how my attachment trauma was showing up in my life as BPD. I attended a DBT course that changed (and saved) my life.
Throughout undergrad, I learned more about Neurodivergence, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (from the clinician side this time), and my identity as a Black woman. Learning Black psychology at an HBCU was deeply impactful in building my identity and helping me to feel close to my community.
Shortly after graduation, I was diagnosed ADHD (as well as finding out about a math learning disability). As I learned more about myself, I focused my graduate studies on populations and modalities that connected with my own lived experience. I felt more and more as if I could help, in part because I knew what it was to feel hopeless, isolated, and have such big emotions they felt they could blot out the sun. I finally found how I could help people. I could listen, and validate and teach the skills that helped me build my life worth living.
I love working with my clients, and I kept hearing from other therapists that there was shit left out of grad school. How tf do I
Figure out this self disclosure shit? I wanna be authentic but everyone says I should be a “blank slate”!
Support vulnerable, queer, neurodivergent, Black, Brown and Asian clients in this current political climate?
Make money and still support my community?!
Run an inclusive and accessible group practice?
How do I get Black, Brown, and Asian employees…fuck or clients for that matter?
Check my privilege if I can’t ask questions?
Stop stigmatizing BPD so I can be truly neurodivergent affirming?
And I decided to take my hard won lived and clinical experience and share it with even more people.
