Sarah Hickinbottom

Counselling for Individuals Facing Significant Personal and/or Professional Transitions

Sarah's practice is focused on working collaboratively with clients facing unexpected changes, difficult transitions, or situations that call for a change in direction and/or a re-imagination of their identities.  

Issues Sarah works with include (but are not limited to):

• Grief/loss
• Anxiety & Depression
• Complex trauma/family of origin issues
• Recovery from relationship breakups
• Career counselling and transitions
• Professional burnout and/or compassion fatigue
• Work-life balance
• Adjustment to chronic health conditions (e.g., pain, injury, illness)
• Issues related to working in academia

Sarah's Approach

Sarah draws on a number of therapeutic approaches including: Existential-humanistic, AEDP, emotion-focused therapy, narrative therapy and cognitive behaviour therapy. However, her work is always based first and foremost on a strong, respectful relationship, the need for every person to feel valued, known and truly seen, and the importance of proceeding in a collaborative, non-judgmental manner, according to her clients' specific needs, wants, and goals.

About Sarah

Sarah is a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) and Approved Clinical Supervisor (ACS) with a Masters in Counselling and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. She has more than 30 years experience in the fields of counselling and education. She has taught at Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, and Kwantlen Polytechnic, and has provided counselling in non-profit and community agencies, as well as univ​ersity counselling centers. She provides clinical supervision for new counsellors, as well as graduate counselling students at a number of institutions and has received awards for her scholarly work from the American Psychological Association.

Having had to redefine her own personal and professional identities following a series of sports and work-related injuries, Sarah understands the frustration, pressure, and losses that occur in response to transitions (expected or unexpected) and the means to succeed and flourish in the wake of change. She is passionate about supporting others in the process of redefining their own personal and/or professional identities in response to change, loss, or a desire for a new way of being.