Hi, I’m Sara.

I’m a therapist for people who think and feel deeply: the ones who’ve spent years trying to make sense of themselves in a world that prefers simpler stories. Many of my clients wonder whether they’re too sensitive, too intense, too analytical, too emotional, or somehow “not built like everyone else.”

I don’t see those traits as flaws.
I see them as strengths that the world often misunderstands.

My work is about creating a space where you don’t have to translate yourself: a space where depth is welcomed, where curiosity is a virtue, and where the complexity of your inner world can finally breathe.

My Background

Before I was a therapist, I lived many lives.

I began as an English major who also studied German, psychology, music, education, philosophy, and religion. I worked as a substitute teacher, then became a stay-at-home mom, then a homeschooler until cancer interrupted that chapter. I tried to home birth but biology interfered (hi there, birth trauma!). I breastfed babies for years, gardened, and baked four loaves of whole wheat bread every week. I was an earnest reader of The Tightwad Gazette.

I was also a devout Mormon for many years, the kind who played the organ for a decade and built life around faith and community. My faith transition was long and layered, and it reshaped everything.

Later, I transcribed college courses for Deaf students, a job I loved. One day I transcribed a web programming course and thought, I bet I could do that.

I eventually went back to school for computer science, launched into a six-year software engineering career, collaborating with smart, curious, deeply analytical people solving interesting problems. I built a Utah Baby Name Generator, a small side project for generating uniquely Utah-style names, because clearly, someone had to.

Eventually, I reached a place where I could choose not just what I was capable of, but what felt deeply meaningful.
That led me to become a therapist.

Along the way, I became a cancer survivor, raised neurodivergent children, navigated divorce and remarriage, blended a family, and rebuilt my life—in small and large ways—more than once.

All of this shapes how I sit with clients. I know what it’s like to reorient yourself from the inside out.
It helps me listen with nuance, hold complexity with care, and meet you where you are.

How I Work

My primary modality is NARM (NeuroAffective Relational Model): a gentle, present-moment, attachment-focused approach that helps you reconnect with agency, clarity, and self-compassion.

NARM is especially supportive for people who:

• grew up feeling out of sync with their environment
• developed emotional independence early
• have complex or developmental trauma
• think deeply and feel deeply
• are analytical but disconnected from their body
• have done insight-based work but still feel stuck

I am also Master Certified in ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy) for targeted trauma processing, and I provide Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) for clients seeking embodied, existential, or accelerated healing.

And yeah, I read a lot. Too much, probably.

I love weaving ideas from books, research, and podcasts into therapy when it supports your process. Many of my clients think in frameworks or metaphors, and having shared intellectual language can open new pathways into emotion, agency, and meaning.

My approach isn’t about forcing a method onto you.
It’s about helping you reconnect with the parts of yourself that already know the way forward.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• A strengths-based lens. I look for what’s right with you, not what’s wrong.
• A deeply respectful pace. We move at the speed your system can genuinely tolerate, not the speed of your urgency or self-criticism.
• Trauma-informed curiosity. Where you are makes sense. Your strategies were intelligent. We work with your resistance, never against it.
• Attachment awareness. Both your early patterns and your present relationships matter, including the one we build in the room.
• Neurodiversity-affirming support. You don’t have to “be different” to be understood here.
• Honoring complexity. You don’t need a neat narrative before sharing your story; we allow things to unfold.
• Mindfulness and present-time awareness. Not as a performance, but as a way of noticing what’s happening now.
• Gentle somatic awareness. Not “Where do you feel it?” pressure, just a slow reconnection to your internal experience, when and if it feels right.
• Cognitive and skills-based tools when they help. Sometimes a bit of CBT or DBT supports nervous system stability and opens space for deeper work.
• Agency as a north star. Real change happens when you begin to feel your own capacity to choose.
• Both/and thinking. Most truths are dialectical; we make room for nuance and contradiction.
• Your story as sacred space. Even the parts that feel confusing or contradictory at first.

Who I Work With

I work with adults who identify with any of the following:

• gifted, bright, intense, or unusually analytical
• highly sensitive or emotionally perceptive
• neurodivergent (diagnosed or self-suspected)
• grew up in families where emotions weren’t understood, welcomed, or handled well
• people who want deep connection but feel unsure how to access it
• navigating major identity shifts or meaning questions
• survivors of cancer or medical trauma
• people who have felt misunderstood in therapy or in life
• people told to “stop overthinking” or that they are “too sensitive”

Many of my clients have spent their lives feeling “too much” or “not enough” in all the wrong ways, and are relieved to finally be in a space where they don’t have to shrink or simplify themselves.

I also work with therapists who want a place to set down their role and be met simply as a person, not as the helper.

What It’s Like to Work With Me

Clients often say they appreciate my:

• calm, grounded presence
• ability to sit comfortably with complexity
• nonlinear, exploratory thinking style
• attunement to emotional, intellectual, and somatic nuance
• respect for neurodivergent ways of experiencing the world
• gentle sense of humor and love of puns
• deep curiosity about who they are becoming

My role isn’t to fix you.
My role is to accompany you as you rediscover parts of yourself that may have gone underground in the effort to survive.

Professional Bio (for referrals & media)

Sara Rands, ACMHC, is an attachment-focused, neurodiversity-affirming therapist specializing in gifted adults, sensitive nervous systems, and identity reconstruction. She practices NARM (NeuroAffective Relational Model) as her primary modality and is Master Certified in ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy). She provides ketamine-assisted psychotherapy through Symmetry Counseling and integrates somatic, existential, and mindfulness-based approaches.
Her lived experience includes cancer survivorship, faith transition, and raising neurodivergent children.

Credentials

• ACMHC, Utah License #13896194-6009
• Practicing under supervision of Jenny Elledge, LMFT
• Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Northwestern University
• Bachelor of Science, Computer Science, Utah Valley University
• Bachelor of Arts, English, Brigham Young University

If you want a therapist who won’t be overwhelmed by your depth—you’re in the right place.