Sabrina Zitzelberger

Hi, I’m Sabrina, and I am a queer, neurodivergent woman doing her best to balance working full time, engaging with my amazing partners, spending time with friends and comrades, and trying to makes this hellscape we call our country a little bit more bearable.

I’m also a person-centered therapist.

Who I Help

I love working with folks surrounding LGBTQIA+ related concerns, gender identity, trauma & PTSD, neurodiversity, and relationship concerns especially folks in non- traditional relationships.

I also work with those struggling with anxiety, depression, family conflict and dysfunction, codependency, intimacy concerns, parenting, ADHD, body image, and understanding emotions both ours and other people’s.

While most of this profile is geared towards adults, I do also work with kids. I use a lot of play in sessions to help kids process what is going on in their world, but I also find a lot of my young clients are able and willing to sit and just talk for a while.

Relationship Counseling

I believe that one of the things that makes us human is the need to have relationships with other people. When I was in graduate school, I was always the odd woman out because I refused to call what I wanted to do “couples counseling” for two key reasons:

1) As someone who is happily polyamorous, I am well aware that not all romantic attachments involve exactly two people.

2) Romantic relationships are not the only types of relationships that matter. Ruptures in your relationship with your parents, your best friend, or a colleague can be extremely painful, and sometimes talking to a third party can help that relationship be repaired.

For relationship counseling, I typically draw upon Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). This modality explores the ways that all parties form attachments, and how they feel secure (or insecure) in them. It helps us dissect the current pattern (which Sue Johnson, creator of EFT, calls “the tango”), and then together, we develop new steps for the next time a disagreement occurs. Disagreeing with each other is a normal, healthy thing for people to do; therapy can help us learn how to disagree without feeling threatened.

I am a big believer that there are many, many ways to have a healthy relationship and that folks are capable of making their own choices about what works for them. I will honor your relationship whether you’re monogamous, ethically nonmonogamous, polyamarous, kinky, vanilla, or exploring different styles to figure out what works best for
you.

Trauma

Trauma rewires our brains. It can change us into people we no longer recognize. Healing, however, will also rewire us. What doesn’t kill us makes us hypervigilant and untrusting —it’s the healing that makes us stronger.

While my specific approach for supporting you will be based on what you need, I generally start by exploring with you what gives you a sense of safety and ways we can return to that sense of safety when things get stressful.

We will explore your past at your pace. It will be uncomfortable at times, but I will be with you every step of the way. It is also important to me to do our best to make sure our sessions end on a note that feels most comfortable for you. (Before I became a therapist myself, I had a therapist who consistently ended sessions while I was highly agitated and stressed—even after I pointed out this was happening and asked her to stop. I vowed to never do that to someone else.)

Gender Identity

Gender is complicated, and societal expectations are a big part of why that is. Regardless of whether or not the doctor guessed your gender correctly when you entered the world, exploring the ways in which you express your gender is often an ongoing, and sometimes complex,
process.

I use inclusive Feminist Therapy along with my Person-Centered Approach when talking about gender. I have supported people both in my personal and professional lives, as they’ve navigated their own relationship with their gender. While I feel that I have explored my own
relationship to gender more than the average cis person, I do want to acknowledge that I do not have direct lived experience with being trans.

What Can You Expect in the Room with Me?

While I do still read academic articles and books, I am far more likely in session to reference a meme or Tik-Tok I just saw that feels relevant to the situation being discussed. I draw upon multiple modalities, depending on the concern we are working through and what you believe may work best for you. Person-centered Therapy however is my primary lens and it will show up even when I’m pulling from EFT techniques, Feminist Therapy, and solution-focused.

Person-centered therapy is all about congruence, which means accepting ourselves fully and being our authentic selves. The process of becoming congruent is similar to forming a deep bond with someone else: your best friend has flaws, sure, but you don’t try to change them because you love them how they are. Becoming congruent is very similar to falling in love with yourself, and it is one of my favorite things to watch other people do.

I have been “on the other side of the couch” a few times, and I have had amazing, horrible, and mediocre experiences as a client. In fact, I became a therapist in part because I’d had a bad experience and recognized an enormous need for more relationship counselors who
understand polyamory. Even better would have been a relationship counselor who was actively practicing ENM. Cue the realization that I could be that someone, add a very supportive wife who was willing to take on student loans, and here we are.

Favorite Therapist Quote

“When I look at a sunset as I did the other evening, I don’t find myself saying, ‘Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and use a little more pink in the cloud color.’ I don’t do that. I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch it with awe as it unfolds.”

—Carl Rogers, A Way of Being