About Sara
Dr. Sara Lewis-Stankus offers calm, direct support for people feeling stuck by stress, anxiety, relationship trouble, low self-esteem, or career challenges. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with 26 years of experience and listens without judgement.
Her approach is practical and focused on small, doable changes that add up over time. She centers sessions on what each person brings and what they want to change. Conversations look at unhelpful patterns, fears, and doubts, and then map out clear steps to try in between meetings.
Background and approach
That work often touches on forgiveness, letting go, or repairing connections with others. Sara uses evidence-informed methods to help people manage strong feelings and take control of daily life. She may use cognitive-behavioral ideas to shift thought patterns and skills from dialectical behavior therapy to handle intense emotions.
For trauma or vivid memories, she may include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing techniques when appropriate. Her practice also addresses issues such as abandonment, attachment, body image, caregiver stress, chronic illness or pain, communication problems, guilt and shame, impulsivity, isolation, and jealousy. She combines practical tools with steady encouragement so progress feels reachable.
Sara works with adults across different life stages from her West Virginia base. Sessions can focus on specific goals like career direction or broader personal growth and transformation. She helps people set realistic steps and build confidence to move forward.
Approaches that translate well to online therapy
Client-centered therapy puts the client's goals first and relies on active listening and collaboration. Online sessions allow the therapist to follow each person's pace, reflect what they say, and help them set small steps to try between meetings.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. In virtual sessions this often means setting simple homework, practicing skills during a call, and reviewing progress in the next meeting to build steady change.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, emphasizes emotion regulation and coping skills for intense feelings. Online formats support teaching and rehearsing these skills, and text or chat can be used for brief check-ins or skills coaching between sessions.
Choosing the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will discuss options and collaborate with the client to match methods to their needs, goals, and preferences rather than prescribing one fixed path.
Online therapy offers practical benefits: video calls let people see facial cues and practice skills in real time, phone sessions require less bandwidth, live chat can be a shorter check-in, and text messaging supports ongoing encouragement and tracking progress. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and to keep momentum between appointments.
Questions people ask
What types of concerns does she help with?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How long has she been practicing?
What credentials and location are listed?
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What session formats are available?
How are sessions paid for?
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Divorce and separation
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 26 years
- Licensed
- West Virginia, California, Florida
- Languages
- English