Ellisse Sawyers

I have been licensed as an LPC in the state of Virginia since 2022 and working in the mental health field since 2017. I have also previously worked as a school counselor with both elementary and middle school-age students. In my practice, I primarily work with older kids, teens, and young adults. My main areas of expertise include working through traumatic experiences, anxiety and depressive disorders, OCD and personality disorders as well as family systems impacted by personality disorders.

In all my work with clients, I maintain a person-centered approach. Essentially, this means that I assume my client is the expert on their own life and I work by providing them space to process their thoughts/feelings and draw from their inner strengths to make positive changes in their lives. I also utilize strength-based and CBT interventions. As a strength-based counselor, I focus on your strengths and the positive attributes you possess that have allowed you to overcome challenges in your life. CBT allows me to assist clients in breaking down their thought patterns in relation to their experiences and working towards changing negative cycles of thinking, in turn generating different behaviors and outcomes. I am also trained in trauma-focused CBT in which we can process through specific traumatic experiences and reframe any negative beliefs you may have ingrained in yourself related to these experiences (essentially working to rewrite your experience and take back your power from these experiences).

I believe that assisting clients to create goals that are the most important to them is the most effective way to ensure that clients are motivated towards reaching their goals. In the first session, I work to get to know the client and the issues they are experiencing from their point of view. We will work together to generate goals to work towards in counseling as well as a general timeline they hope to achieve these goals. I will allow the client to ask any questions they may have about me and my life in order to make them feel more comfortable/familiar with me if they so desire.