Sarah Teets, Master’s Student

I am a Masters student in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, currently serving as a student intern at Full Life. It is my joy to work with people to help them experience healing, empowerment, and safety. I believe that everyone has within them the capacity for growth and healing, but we sometimes need help tapping into that capacity. Using a compassionate, person-centered approach, I build affirming, collaborative relationships with my clients to support their growth, whether they are struggling with anxiety, trauma, relationship issues, life stage issues, spirituality, questions of identity, or other difficulties. 

I come to the practice of counseling as a second career after serving on the faculty at the University of Virginia. In my first career, I wrestled with core questions of the human condition through the study of language, literature, history, and philosophy of various cultures. As a scholar, I pursued questions of identity, trauma, moral injury, gender and gender expression, intimate partner violence, and imperial/colonial encounters. I received my Bachelors degree in German and Classics in 2007 from California State University, Long Beach, my first Masters degree in Classics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2012, and my PhD in Classics from UVA in 2018. 

In my time as a scholar and teacher of Greek and Roman antiquity, I focused on the lives of real people represented in the literary record. The scholarship and teaching of history is a practice of empathy. In the classroom, I taught my students as whole people, inviting them to explore their emotional responses to course material while also engaging in critical analysis in a safe environment. 

I am excited and honored to bring my knowledge of and passion for human experience to my work as a counselor. I approach the process of counseling from an existential orientation, which means that I view mental health struggles not as a disease process or a need to restructure our cognitive patterns, but as stemming from disconnection. Healing occurs when we create a sense of connection within our close relationships, with our communities, with our sense of meaning, and even with our own mortality. This healing occurs experientially within the counseling relationship as we work together to mindfully attend to your feelings and experiences in the moment with compassion and acceptance.

Sarah offers clinical services under the supervision of Jordan Leahy, MA LPC VA license #0701011573.

Fees: Base rate is $85. As a master’s student under supervision, she is currently unable to accept insurance.

To schedule an appointment, please call 434-260-1762 or visit the Contact page.