Mary Sanders

Mary Sanders, LMHC, practices in Washington and brings 17 years of professional experience across clinical practice and community health settings. She focuses on relationship and family challenges, trauma and abuse, grief, and coping with life changes. Additional areas of attention include abandonment and attachment issues, communication problems, divorce and separation, guilt and shame, isolation and loneliness, life purpose and midlife transitions, post-traumatic stress, and social anxiety and phobia.

Her background in the arts informs a creative approach to clinical work. She has advanced training in drama therapy and twenty years of experience using theatre and expressive arts as healing modalities. Mary works with all ages in individual and family modalities and integrates attachment-based, client-centered, cognitive behavioral, mindfulness, motivational interviewing, and psychodynamic perspectives alongside expressive techniques.

In trauma-focused work she uses EMDR-informed methods, trauma-focused CBT, and creative arts therapies, and she also draws on role theory, sociometry, and solution-focused techniques when appropriate. Mary is qualified to provide assessment and basic recommendations for nutritional and complementary and alternative medicine approaches. She emphasizes collaboration and steady support for people taking the first steps toward change.