Sara Tinker, LCSW

Sara Tinker is a licensed clinical social worker with more than 26 years of experience. She focuses on helping people manage anxiety, stress, relationship struggles, grief, and patterns that get in the way of daily life. Sara works in a warm, interactive way that centers what a person brings and their goals.

Her approach blends attachment-based ideas with client-centered care and skill-building from dialectical behavior therapy. She uses emotionally focused work to help with connection and meaning, and draws on existential questions when people face big life transitions. She also brings trauma-informed methods to work through past hurts.

Sara trained in exercise physiology and later completed graduate social work training at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Over her career she has worked in community mental health, adolescent inpatient settings, substance use treatment, and private practice, and has long experience with trauma, chronic illness, and complex life change.

She incorporates somatic approaches and trauma-processing tools alongside talk therapy when that fits, and she has studied sandtray methods as part of her practice. Her style emphasizes respect, dignity, and building on a person's strengths rather than labels.

Sara aims to help people improve everyday habits of thought and behavior, strengthen relationships, and regain a sense of hope and choice. She invites people to explore practical tools and different ways of relating to emotions so daily life feels more manageable.

How her approaches translate to online therapy

Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how early relationship patterns shape current connections; online sessions can help identify those patterns and practice new ways of relating. Client-Centered Therapy centers the person's experience and priorities, offering a space to talk things through and make sense of daily habits and thoughts. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) brings clear skills for managing intense emotions and improving coping, useful for anxiety, stress, and relationship conflicts.

Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will talk with the person about goals, symptoms, and preferences and then recommend approaches or blend methods that fit. That collaboration means treatment can shift as needs change.

Confirm current session options before booking, as specific formats are not listed here. Online therapy can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy life, shorten travel time, and allow follow-up check-ins without a full in-person visit. It also supports more frequent practice of skills between meetings and helps maintain continuity during big life changes. Licensed professionals, including this therapist, use these methods to help people change everyday habits of thought and behavior and to strengthen emotional connections.