Sarah Natsumi Moore
She/Her · LPC-Associate (May 2026)
Pre-licensed counselor with a background in IFS, attachment, and existential approaches. Drawn to identity, belonging, and the complexity of cross-cultural experience.
Completing an M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Seminary of the Southwest, graduating May 2026. Currently completing internship hours at Capital Area Counseling in Austin.
Biracial and bicultural (Japanese-American), with a lived background in cross-cultural displacement, third culture identity, and code-switching that directly informs my clinical work. Also a working commercial photographer of fifteen years.
I work with warmth, directness, and genuine curiosity, and I bring both clinical rigor and lived experience to the room.
Modalities & Approach
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Psychodynamic
Existential Theory
Enneagram
Somatic & Body-Informed
Mindfulness-Based
Clinical Experience
Capital Area Counseling
2025 - Present
Education
Student Counselor providing individual and couples counseling at a nonprofit community mental health agency serving a diverse, multicultural client base on a sliding-scale basis.
Working primarily with adults presenting with ADHD, trauma, anxiety, depression, relational conflict, grief, and identity concerns. Conducting intake assessments, developing treatment plans, and delivering evidence-informed interventions under clinical supervision
Seminary of the Southwest
Austin, Texas - Graduating May 2026
M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling · CACREP Accredited · 60 Credit Hours · 4.0 GPA
One of the few graduate counseling programs in the country that fully integrates clinical training with spiritual, ethical, and existential depth. Curriculum built around a social justice–oriented framework developing counselors across three dimensions: being, knowing, and doing.
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands - 2009-2010
M.A. in New Media · Full Academic Scholarship
University of Texas at Austin
2004-2008
B.S. in Communication (Radio-Television-Film) & B.A. in Sociology
Additional Training
Contemplative & Psychedelic Retreat Support
Brazil, The Netherlands, Portugal, Texas - 2016 - 2026
Ten years in integration assistant roles within ceremonial and meditation retreat settings, including assisting at multiple 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreats.
Preparation support, on-site assistance during ceremony, and post-retreat integration. Most recently studied at a 5-day IFS-informed ayahuasca retreat applying parts work within a ceremonial container. Grounded in trauma-informed care and harm reduction throughout.
Learning Love Institute
Mexico, Italy, Virtual - 2021 - 2025
Two-Year Therapy Training & 2 Seminars. Rigorous experiential training in relational depth work grounded in attachment theory, inner child work, and object relations.
Focus on the movement from codependency to conscious relating, the psychology of abandonment and shame, and embodied presence as a clinical skill.
Somatic & Relational Training
Brazil - 2022 - 2024
Part 1 & 2. Therapeutically rigorous training integrating sexuality, somatic awareness, nervous system regulation, breathwork, and relational healing.
Forms the foundation of a sex-positive, body-informed approach to sexuality and intimacy in clinical work, including psychosexual education, shame reduction, and working with clients navigating sexual identity and relational wounding.
Alongside my clinical training, I’ve worked for over fifteen years as a commercial photographer and continue to do so. That ongoing creative practice gives me a firsthand understanding of the inner world of creatives and the particular way freelance and artistic lives resist conventional structure.
I grew up moving internationally with my American father, whose work took us across multiple countries, while my Japanese mother remained in Japan. I spent my life between two cultures, two languages, and two homes, never fully settled in either. That lived experience directly informs my work with third culture individuals, expats, bicultural families, and anyone navigating the psychological weight of a life shaped by movement and in-betweenness.
Specializations
Expats, Third Culture & Bicultural Identity
Third culture individuals, expats, and bicultural families navigating the particular grief and disorientation of belonging nowhere and everywhere. Repatriation, culture shock, code-switching, fractured identity, and the loneliness of a life shaped by movement.
Veterans and military families. People in midlife whose sense of home and self is shifting under their feet.
Creatives & Artists
Artists, designers, freelancers, and anyone whose work and identity are dangerously intertwined. The cycles of visibility and self-doubt, imposter syndrome, burnout, and the particular way creative and unconventional lives resist conventional structure.
Informed by over fifteen years as a working commercial photographer.
Codependency & Attachment Wounds
Individual adults working through codependent patterns, enmeshment, relational trauma, and the chronic self-erasure that develops when someone has spent a lifetime adapting to others.
ADHD & Neurodivergence
ADHD and neurodivergence, approached with personal as well as clinical understanding.
Practical tools for organization, time management, and daily structure. Strategies for emotional regulation, overwhelm, and the shame cycles that come with a brain that doesn’t work the way the world expects it to.
Psychedelic Integration
Preparation, integration, and the long road after. Dark nights of the soul, spiritual emergence, and the life changes that follow transformative experiences.
Support for clients who have done the work and are now trying to land the plane — making sense of what happened, navigating relationships and identity on the other side, and continuing integration in the here and now.