Anxiety, Trauma & Somatic Psychotherapist in Thousand Oaks & Santa Monica
Providing specialized anxiety, trauma, and relational therapy in-person and virtually across California
I help teens and adults heal from anxiety, trauma, social anxiety, people-pleasing, relational trauma, and the lasting impact of emotionally immature relationships. Using Somatic Experiencing (SE), EMDR, psychodynamic therapy, and IFS-informed therapy, I support clients in understanding the patterns that keep them feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or disconnected so they can develop greater self-trust, healthier relationships, and a deeper sense of safety within themselves.
Specialties & Clinical Areas of Focus
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Trauma & Somatic Therapy
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Breakups & Relationship Loss
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Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
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Anxiety & High-Functioning Anxiety
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Relationship Trauma & Attachment
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People-Pleasing & Perfectionism
Types of Therapy
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Individual Therapy
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Couples Therapy
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Family Therapy
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Group Therapy
Who I Work With
Young Adults
Additional Areas of Support
In addition to my primary specialties, I also support clients experiencing:
You Don't Have to Navigate This Alone
Perhaps you look like you have it all together on the outside while feeling overwhelmed, anxious, disconnected, or exhausted on the inside.
Maybe you've spent years taking care of others, replaying conversations, struggling to set boundaries, or wondering why relationships feel so difficult.
Trauma often happens in isolation, and healing happens in relationship.
You may look like you're holding it all together on the outside while feeling overwhelmed, anxious, disconnected, or stuck on the inside.
Perhaps you've spent years taking care of others, overthinking your relationships, replaying conversations, or feeling like no matter how hard you try, you can't truly relax.
You overthink conversations long after they happen
You struggle to set boundaries without guilt
You feel responsible for other people’s emotions
You feel anxious or on edge much of the time
You’re untangling family dynamics or relational trauma
You’ve tried talk therapy but still feel stuck
This is where deeper, body-based work can create real change.
My Therapeutic Approach: What Makes My Practice Different
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Trauma, anxiety, and chronic stress don't just affect our thoughts—they also impact our bodies and nervous systems. Through Somatic Experiencing (SE), I help clients understand how experiences can become "stuck" in the body and work toward developing greater regulation, resilience, and a sense of safety. Rather than forcing change, we work together at a pace that feels manageable and supportive.
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EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a research-supported therapy that can help process difficult experiences, traumatic memories, and negative beliefs that continue to affect the present. This approach can be particularly helpful for trauma, anxiety, relationship wounds, and experiences that feel difficult to move past through talk therapy alone.
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Many people experience different "parts" of themselves—perhaps a part that wants connection and another that wants to pull away, or a part that strives for perfection while another feels overwhelmed. Using an IFS-informed approach, we work to understand these parts with curiosity and compassion rather than judgment. By developing a deeper understanding of your internal experiences, you can begin to respond more intentionally rather than reacting from old patterns, fear, or self-criticism.
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Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) integrates mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness to help you better understand and manage your emotions. As an evidence-based approach, DBT teaches practical skills you can use in everyday life, empowering you to navigate challenges with greater confidence and resilience.
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Our earliest experiences and relationships often shape how we relate to ourselves and others. Together, we'll explore the patterns, beliefs, and relational experiences that may contribute to anxiety, people-pleasing, perfectionism, relationship difficulties, or feeling disconnected from yourself.
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There is no one-size-fits-all approach to healing. My background includes working in university counseling settings, teaching graduate-level clinical psychology students as an adjunct professor, practicing equine-assisted psychotherapy, and now working in private practice with teens and adults. I strive to create a therapeutic relationship where you feel understood, supported, and empowered to develop greater self-trust, healthier relationships, and a deeper sense of safety within yourself.
Who I Often Work With
I often work with individuals who:
✓ struggle with people-pleasing and setting boundaries,
✓ feel responsible for other people's emotions,
✓ experience anxiety, perfectionism, or chronic self-doubt,
✓ grew up with emotionally immature, inconsistent, or unpredictable caregivers,
✓ understand their patterns intellectually but still feel stuck,
✓ seek reassurance from others but struggle to trust themselves,
✓ appear high-functioning on the outside while feeling overwhelmed internally,
✓ want to develop healthier relationships and a stronger connection to themselves.
Why Clients Seek Me Out
Many of my clients come to therapy after years of trying to manage things on their own. They may appear high-functioning on the outside while feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or stuck internally.
✓ Trauma and relational trauma
✓ Anxiety and high-functioning anxiety
✓ Social anxiety
✓ People-pleasing and perfectionism
✓ Adult children of emotionally immature parents
✓ Relationship trauma and attachment wounds
✓ Breakups and difficult life transitions
✓ Feeling stuck despite years of insight, self-reflection, or previous therapy
About Sara Lichstein, LMFT
Hello!I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in trauma, anxiety, people-pleasing, and relational trauma. My approach is grounded in the belief that healing happens not only through insight, but also through understanding the nervous system, our relationships, and the patterns we've developed to survive difficult experiences.
My professional background includes working in university counseling settings, teaching graduate-level clinical psychology students as an adjunct professor, providing equine-assisted psychotherapy, and now working in private practice with teens and adults throughout California.
I have advanced training in Somatic Experiencing (SE), EMDR, psychodynamic therapy, and IFS-informed therapy, which allows me to support clients in healing from trauma, anxiety, emotionally immature relationships, and the patterns that keep them feeling stuck or disconnected.
My goal is to create a therapeutic relationship where you feel understood, supported, and empowered to develop greater self-trust, healthier relationships, and a deeper sense of safety within yourself.
I provide trauma, anxiety, and somatic therapy for teens and adults in Santa Monica, Thousand Oaks, and virtually throughout California.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Many people feel stuck after years of insight-focused counseling because traditional talk therapy primarily engages the analytical brain, leaving trauma and anxiety unresolved in the physical nervous system. You can intellectually understand your childhood dynamics, people-pleasing habits, or relationship triggers without actually changing how your body reacts to them. By integrating somatic therapy, EMDR, and IFS-informed parts work, we bridge the gap between cognitive insight and deep, physiological healing—addressing the emotional loops where your body still feels trapped.
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Somatic therapy is a body-based psychotherapy framework that focuses on the deep connection between the mind and the autonomic nervous system to gently release stored trauma, stress, and survival energy. While traditional therapies process experiences solely through words, a somatic approach helps you tune into physical sensations. By safely tracking where stress lives in your body, you can process old fight, flight, or freeze responses, naturally lowering your baseline anxiety and building a genuine sense of internal safety.
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Somatic therapy treats high-functioning anxiety by teaching you to recognize, regulate, and calm the physical signals of a hypervigilant nervous system before they turn into mental overthinking. Individuals with high-functioning anxiety often look perfectly organized on the outside while experiencing constant muscle tension, shallow breathing, or a racing heart on the inside. Somatic tracking shifts your body out of a continuous survival mode, allowing you to quiet chronic self-doubt and finally relax without feeling overwhelming guilt.
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The fawn response is a deeply ingrained trauma response where an individual automatically uses people-pleasing, boundary deficits, and hyper-compliance to avoid conflict and establish a sense of relational safety. Often developing in response to growing up with emotionally immature or unpredictable caregivers, fawning causes you to intuitively prioritize other people’s emotional states over your own well-being. Therapy helps you untangle these survival patterns, allowing you to set firm boundaries without crushing guilt and rebuild a foundation of self-trust.
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Yes, I provide confidential online therapy via a secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform to teens, adults, and helping professionals living anywhere in the state of California. Virtual somatic therapy, EMDR, and parts work are incredibly effective online, allowing you to engage in deep healing from the comfort and privacy of your own home. For clients seeking in-person care, I also accommodate sessions out of my local office hubs in both Thousand Oaks and Santa Monica.
Ready to Begin?
You don't have to navigate anxiety, trauma, relationship struggles, or the lasting effects of difficult experiences on your own. Therapy can be a space to better understand yourself, develop greater self-trust, and create meaningful, lasting change.
I offer therapy for teens and adults in Santa Monica, Thousand Oaks, and virtually throughout California.