Sally Schulman

I'm Sally — a licensed therapist (LMSW) and former occupational therapist working with adults across Michigan via telehealth. Most of my clients are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, and they're often dealing with a combination of things: chronic pain that's worn them down emotionally, anxiety that's crept into every corner of their life, depression, or a relationship with alcohol or substances that started as a coping mechanism and became something more. My OT background is a big part of how I work. In occupational therapy, you're always thinking about the whole person — how their body, their daily routines, their roles, and their environment all affect how they're doing. I bring that same lens to mental health.

My OT training shapes everything about how I do therapy. OT is fundamentally about function — what gets in the way of you living the life you want, and how do we actually fix that? I bring that same practical, whole-person thinking into my mental health work. I use CBT to look at how your thought patterns are driving your experience, ACT to help you build more flexibility around the hard stuff instead of fighting it, and EFT when we need to go deeper into the emotional weight underneath. For chronic pain clients especially, I find this combination useful — we're not ignoring the body, we're working with it. I'm collaborative and direct. I'm not going to assign homework you'll never do. We'll figure out what's actually useful for your life.

The first session is mostly me getting to know you — what's been going on, how long it's been going on, and what you're hoping changes. I'll probably ask about your physical health too, not just your mental health, because for a lot of my clients the two are deeply connected. If you've been living with chronic pain or a health condition that's worn you down, I want to understand that. You don't need to have your story organized or figured out before we meet. Most people don't. We'll work through it together, and by the end of the hour you'll have a sense of whether working with me feels right.