We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Rollins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah below.
Hi Sarah , thanks for joining us today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?
Three days after my freshman year of college, I checked myself into residential treatment for an eating disorder. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life. Paradoxically, it was also the most freeing. One of the aspects that delayed me getting treatment was the fear that I wouldn’t get better. This fear continued while in treatment too. I saw the other girls around me improving and my biggest fear was that it wouldn’t work for me. Residential treatment felt like my last resort and if that didn’t work, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Luckily, treatment was a safe place where we could all express our fears. One day I decided to share my thoughts with another resident and she gave me one of the most precious gifts I’ve ever received. She said to me, with steadiness and confidence, “I will hold the belief that you will get better until you do.” This permitted me to feel the fear about not recovering while also having hope that I could. I will forever be grateful to her because I believe it was one of the key aspects that allowed me to heal. This has also been one of my foundational beliefs as a social worker. I hold the belief that people can heal, even when they have a hard time believing it themselves.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Sarah Rollins and I am a clinical social worker and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). In other words, I help people release trauma stuck in their bodies. I own a group therapy practice called Embodied Wellness, PLLC. We are an all-virtual practice throughout the state of Michigan. We offer somatic therapy to adolescents and adults who have experienced trauma, anxiety, and depression. Somatic therapy is a form of mental health treatment that incorporates the body and nervous system instead of only our thoughts and feelings. Our therapists are trained in somatic therapies such as Somatic Experiencing, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Internal Family Systems (IFS). We also provide more traditional therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for OCD. We are LGBTQ+ friendly and BIPOC-affirming. We also have Spanish-speaking therapists.
My path did not start as a business owner. It has been a long and windy road to get me to where I am now. My social work journey began working the night shift at a domestic violence shelter as an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan. My passion for working with survivors of trauma began as I saw firsthand the strength and perseverance the women and children exemplified. The injustice of the legal system, the lack of policies to protect survivors, and the discrimination they endured further drove me in my pursuit as a social worker.
My career path has led me down different avenues such as working with juveniles and their families on probation, in a residential treatment center for foster children, and in an outpatient addiction treatment center. Throughout these experiences, I noticed a few common threads. Underneath every behavior, whether it be substance use, truancy, or people pleasing, I believe at the core people want to be seen, loved, and accepted. Another thread I noticed is that no one gets better shaming themselves. Shame does not motivate us, it only shuts us down. This motivated me to learn more about trauma and the nervous system. I pursued a postgraduate certificate in Somatic Experiencing, which is a 3-year training focused on treating trauma and related disorders. The impact of how our bodies respond to trauma (yes, shame can be trauma!) is profound. This has been the center of my work for the past 4 years and part of the foundations of my business, Embodied Wellness, PLLC. The name of my business is intentional. I believe that wellness and healing have to be embodied, meaning felt in the body. It cannot just be cognitive or all in the mind. This has been reinforced both personally and professionally for me. To have any effective trauma treatment, you have to include the body.
I believe that social work is not just a job. It is in my bones. It is what I believe, think, feel and breathe. It is a way of life and moving through the world. I use this to motivate me daily. What also motivates me is the desire to increase access to somatic therapy within Michigan. There are very few somatic therapists and I am passionate about spreading awareness. So many individuals reach out feeling hopeless because they have tried traditional talk therapy and they still suffer from trauma symptoms. I want to offer the same hope that they can recover to others that was so graciously offered to me over 16 years ago.
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
Authenticity. As someone who is in therapy myself, I don’t want a therapist who is a robot. I want a therapist who is themselves. Who is authentic and raw. I don’t want worksheets or to read a book. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for those things but they are not a replacement for therapy or a therapist!
I believe that being myself with my client, quirks and all, is the most important aspect of being a therapist. In session, I have made weird jokes, tripped over my words, snorted, and mindlessly sang while scheduling an appointment. These are all aspects of who I am. It shows that I am human, just like them. One of the key elements in therapy is trust and safety between the client and therapist. In the therapy world, we call this “therapeutic rapport.” Without this, all the training and knowledge you have as a clinician is irrelevant. One way to build trust and safety is to be your authentic self. People, especially those with trauma, can see right through me if I am not myself. If I am not true to myself in session, why should I ask my clients to be open with who they are?
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
“I can only be happy when…” “I can only go on my dream vacation when….”
“I can only buy a house when…”
For as long as I can remember, I lived my life in the future, not the present. I wanted certain things to be “just right” or a specific way before I did them. I had an idea in my mind about how I wanted my life to look and it would hold me back from actually living! In a lot of ways, my life and what I did was conditional. As I grew up and realized that I was the one holding myself back in a lot of ways, I decided to start doing the things I wanted to do without condition. “I can buy a house now. I can be happy now. I can go on my dream vacation now.” Of course, there are external limitations to this. Finances, time, the housing market, etc. These limitations are real and part of my experience and decision-making but not what I needed to unlearn. What I needed to unlearn was how to not let my own beliefs around the conditions upon which I did these things hold me back! I am still in the process of unlearning this but I’m grateful to be learning something new.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.embodiedwellnesstherapy.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/embodiedwellnesstherapy
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/embodiedwellnesstherapy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/embodied-wellness-pllc