Trauma and PTSD therapists & psychiatrists in Sarasota, FL

I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and founder of Roots Healing Alliance, where I help individuals and couples do deeper, meaningful healing work. I specialize in trauma, anxiety, and relationship patterns, using a mix of insight-based and body-centered approaches. My style is warm, direct, and real. You won’t get a “therapist mask,” but someone who’s genuinely in it with you. I’ll support you while also gently challenging you to grow. My goal is to help you better understand yourself and create lasting, authentic change.

I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Certified Recovery Peer Specialist and an Army combat veteran. I have extensive experience working with adults struggling with anxiety, depression, PTSD, and substance abuse. My therapeutic philosophy includes an integrative approach and strongly believe in using a “mission-focused mindset” to help veterans and first responders overcome challenges associated with a variety of mental health issues.

Margaret Deuerlein, LMHC, is an experienced and skilled Licensed Psychotherapist. She specializes in Trauma, Anxiety and Panic Disorders, Social Anxiety, Stress, Depression, Mood Dysregulation, Low Self-esteem, Grief, Narcissistic, Borderline, Avoidant Personality, Co-dependency, Interpersonal Relationships, Communication, and Couple’s Therapy. She is EMDR-Certified and trained in Shema Therapy, CBT, DBT, Mindfulness, EFT, and the Gottman Method, among others. Healing, coping, achieving your life goals, and taking more control of your life are her focus. She offers in-person and virtual sessions. Bilingual services are available.

I offers a warm, non-judgmental therapeutic experience grounded in genuine connection and collaboration. I work with adolescents and adults, and I am especially passionate about supporting you in deepening self-understanding, fostering harmony within yourself and in your relationships, and building a life that reflects your values and sense of purpose. I bring experience from many years of working in multiple levels of dual-diagnosis care. I have been a registered yoga teacher for 10 years, and enjoy incorporating mind–body practices into therapeutic work.

I have worked with clients from ages 3 through 80 and with individuals, couples, and families. With that breadth of experience, very little shocks or surprises me, and I am able to develop an individualized approach for each client, combining therapy modalities that play to my strengths as a counselor and that are helpful for the people I’m working with.

Three principles shape all the counseling I do:

• Counseling should be efficient. Counseling has significant costs in time and money. I think the benefits far outweigh the costs but when I can give you the benefits while helping you save on the costs I will do that. So I choose approaches to counseling (like EMDR and EFT) that generally work more quickly. That being said, I don’t want to you to feel better for three to six months and then need counseling again because we only worked on symptom relief and didn’t bring healing to the underlying causes. That doesn’t seem very efficient to me. So my goal is to provide as long-lasting and complete help as possible in as little time as possible.
• The client is always in charge. People are complex and come with years of history that I can never know all of. I know a lot of things but you will always be the one who decides what you want to get out of counseling, how we work towards that goal, whether or not what we’re doing seems to be working, and when we’re done.
• Change and health happen through relationships. The work we do in counseling will touch on how your relationships impact your health. No matter what you come in for, there are always relational implications of change and relational factors that contribute to whatever it is that you came to counseling to change. Change can only happen in counseling because of our relationship. It’s my responsibility to make our relationship a place where you feel heard and accepted.

Drawing from twenty years of experience in education and principal of therapeutic schools, I have developed the art of conflict resolution with reticent learners, with parents, with couples and individuals. I have the skillset to support people and transform their perceptions of self to cope with communication issues, anger, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and trauma. My empathetic approach offers people to find positive and creative techniques. I am highly gifted in working to establish and enhance relationships between parent and child/husband and wife using conflict resolution to create opportunities. As a clinician of almost ten years, I interact exceedingly well with individuals and couples to support positive communication and achieve personal growth whether it be in a marriage, parenting/school skills, or within oneself. My understanding, compassion, and acceptance of people when they enter therapy create a safe and trusting environment to unpack problems and develop strategies that enhance well-being, stability, and alternative perspectives on how to address struggles/conflicts.