Sara Tinker, LCSW
Tennessee · 26 years in practice
Sara Tinker is a licensed clinical social worker with 26 years of experience helping people navigate stress, anxiety, relationships, trauma, and life transitions.
License and registration
- LCSW, Tennessee
- 1046 · expires April 2028
- NPI
- 1578905204 · national provider identifier
- Years in practice
- 26
- Languages
- English
Details are as listed on the therapist's public professional profile. You can check the license with the issuing state board, and the NPI with the national registry.
About Sara
Sara Tinker is a licensed clinical social worker with 26 years of experience helping people navigate stress, anxiety, relationships, trauma, and life transitions. She uses a warm, interactive style and focuses on building a trusting working relationship. Sara aims to help individuals find clearer communication, stronger boundaries, and more satisfying connections.
Sara blends Emotionally-Focused Therapy with attachment-based and client-centered approaches to focus on feelings and relationship patterns. She also draws on elements of dialectical behavior therapy and existential ideas when they fit a person’s needs.
Background and approach
Sessions emphasize understanding emotional responses, practicing new ways of relating, and trying skills in everyday life. Her background includes a Master of Social Work and broad clinical experience in community mental health, adolescent psychiatric care, addiction services, and independent practice. That range shaped a practical way of working with grief, chronic health conditions, and long-term mood concerns.
She brings personal life experience with caregiving, recovery, and loss to her clinical perspective. Sara has worked with people facing attachment and abandonment issues, body image and identity questions, kink-informed concerns, blended family stress, and caregiver strain. She also addresses addictions, bipolar mood patterns, sleep problems, and compassion fatigue.
Her approach looks at both feelings in the moment and patterns across relationships. In sessions she listens, reflects, and offers tools that fit your situation. Together, she helps clients set goals, practice new communication, and find more balance amid life’s stresses.
Focus areas and approaches
Everything Sara lists on their public professional profile, in their own terms.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
- Self esteem
- Depression
- Addictions
- LGBT
- Family conflicts
- Grief
- Intimacy-related issues
- Sleeping disorders
- Parenting issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Coping with life changes
- Compassion fatigue
- Abandonment
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Postpartum depression
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Approaches Sara names
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Existential Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
Naming an approach is not evidence of training in it. This directory copies what each therapist lists and does not check training records.
Online support
Emotion and Attachment Work Online
Sara often uses Emotionally-Focused Therapy to help people notice and name core emotions and then change patterns that keep relationships stuck. EFT focuses on what people feel in the moment and how those feelings shape interactions, which can help with intimacy, communication, and attachment worries.She also draws on Attachment-Based Therapy to look at long-standing patterns of closeness and distance. This approach helps people understand why they react the way they do in close relationships and how to build more stable connections. Client-Centered Therapy rounds out her work by focusing on respectful listening and meeting each person where they are, helping people feel understood as they consider change.
Finding the right approach is a team effort. The therapist will talk with clients about goals, preferences, and day-to-day needs, then try ideas that fit. That collaborative process means approaches can shift over time based on what is most helpful.
Online work is offered through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to give practical options. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and emotion work. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in fits a busy day. Messaging and live chat can help maintain contact between sessions or support gradual steps toward deeper work. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into real life while using the emotional and attachment-focused methods described above.
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Questions people ask
What concerns does Sara commonly address?
Sara works with a wide range of issues including stress, anxiety, depression, trauma and abuse, relationships, grief, addiction, sleep problems, parenting strain, and compassion fatigue.
What is her general therapeutic style?
Her style is warm and interactive, focusing on emotion, relationship patterns, and practical skills. Sessions emphasize understanding feelings and practicing new ways of relating.
How long has she been practicing?
She brings 26 years of clinical experience across community mental health, adolescent psychiatric care, addiction services, and independent practice settings.
What credentials does she hold and where does she practice?
She is an LCSW licensed in Tennessee and provides services based on that credential and regional practice location.
Are sessions available in languages other than English?
Sessions are offered in English.
Which session formats are offered?
Sessions are available as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to fit different schedules and needs.
How are fees and billing handled?
Cost varies with location and therapist availability; sessions use a subscription model that can be canceled at any time.
What is the first step to begin working together?
Start by selecting the Start Therapy button, completing a short matching questionnaire, and then scheduling according to therapist availability.
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