Sarah (Sid) Treaster, MSW, MEd, LCSW (Associate Therapist)

Sarah (Sid) Treaster (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary therapist at the Center for Growth in Providence, Rhode Island. Sid works virtually in Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They provide in-person and virtual therapy to individuals, groups, couples, and other relationship formations. Sid draws heavily from Narrative Therapy, Emotion-Focused Therapy, Strength-Based Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, and Mindfulness practices in their work with clients.

Sid works with clients in the following areas:

Anxiety & Panic Attacks
Bipolar Disorder
Borderline Personality Disorder
Depression
Trauma / PTSD
Grief & Loss
Gender Identity / Gender Dysphoria
LGBTQIA+ Issues
Life Transitions
Mindfulness
Multiculturalism Issues
Poly / Open Relationships
Race, Power & Oppression
Relationship and Couples Therapy
Sex Therapy

Sid views their therapeutic practice as an ongoing collaboration with their clients. Working together, they will explore clients’ relevant histories, examine client values, set goals for treatment, and tailor any therapeutic interventions to the needs of the client (or clients) instead of using a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Sid knows that clients are the experts on their own lives and wants to help them work towards their goals and reach their full potential through a safe, empowering, therapeutic alliance.

Sarah (Sid) Treaster is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Rhode Island and is currently working toward getting their LSW in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They offer in-person therapy sessions at the Providence, Rhode Island office as well as virtual sessions for those living in PA and NJ.

Background

Sid was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they found a love of ballet that moved them all over the country throughout their high school experience. Sid received their bachelor’s degree in Gender and Women’s Studies at Connecticut College in the small town of New London, Connecticut. Following graduation, they worked at a crisis center in Lynn, Massachusetts as a Sexual Assault Counselor and Educator for a few years before enrolling in graduate school. This job allowed them to dip their toes into the world of therapy, as well as give them beneficial experience providing sex and consent education in high schools and colleges which they came to love. After a three-year dual-degree graduate program, Sid acquired a Master of Social Work and a Master of Education in Human Sexuality in which they completed the Sex Therapy specialty track.

During their graduate degree program, Sid interned at Riverside Community Care’s transitional therapeutic day program for teens in Massachusetts that specialized in treating individuals experiencing symptoms of psychosis. Here, they regularly facilitated adolescent groups in art therapy, movement therapy, narrative therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy. In their final year of graduate school, they interned at Boston GLASS, a program of Justice Resource Institute that serves LGBTQ+ youth of color ages 13-29. Sid provided outpatient therapy to a caseload of clients who presented with issues including but not limited to depression, anxiety, mood disorders, personality disorders, gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, self-esteem issues, disability, familial conflict, relationship issues, discrimination, and oppression.

Sid has worked with a multitude of mental and behavioral health issues, such as mood disorders, anxiety, personality disorders, trauma, and psychosis, with their most extensive experience in issues related to gender identity, sexual trauma, and depression. They have worked closely with a wide range of clients in age, race, culture, ethnicity, ability, socio-economic status, religion, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Sid recognizes that identity is deeply entangled with a person’s individual experience, and they strive to use an anti-oppression approach in their therapy practice. Ableism, ageism, sexism, racism, fatphobia, whorephobia, queerphobia, transphobia, and many other forms of oppression can all play a part in a person’s relationship to their mental health, and these factors are not to be ignored in the therapy process. Sid is dedicated to using an intersectional lens and whole-person view when engaging with their clients in an attempt to acknowledge all the factors that contribute to a person’s unique life experience.

Therapeutic Style

There are far too many places in our world today where we are forced to face discomfort, lack of safety, and to feel deeply misunderstood. Sid’s goal is to cultivate a comfortable, relaxed, warm (but still chill), and safe environment where clients are free to be their most authentic selves. Sid prioritizes building a strong therapeutic rapport with their clients for their work together to be successful. This means leading with empathy, kindness, humor (when appropriate), and zero pressure to ever share anything that someone might not yet be ready to. Sid welcomes honest feedback from clients to better adapt to their individual needs and desires in the treatment process.

Narrative Therapy

Sid believes everyone has unique stories to tell. Narrative Therapy offers techniques to explore the dominant beliefs we may hold in our life that might be contributing to our presenting problems. Narrative Therapy is useful to help clients identify their problem-saturated narratives, understand how these storylines might be affecting a client’s experience, work to separate themselves from their problems, find unique outcomes in their storylines to help challenge their dominant narratives, and ultimately re-author their life stories to create a more productive and satisfying life experience that aligns with the client’s values.

Emotion-Focused Therapy

Emotions can often be tricky to understand in ourselves; everyone processes emotions in very different ways and at different speeds. Emotion-focused therapy can assist clients in identifying the different layers and complexities of emotions that can be felt all at the same moment. Sid uses this framework to help clients process difficult emotions, understand the root causes of emotions, and figure out how to learn from them and put them to good use in multiple areas of one’s life.

Strength-Based Therapy

Social work is a field that leans heavily on the strengths-based perspective. This means that while Sid will ask a client about their presenting problem and how it is negatively affecting their life, they will also want to know a great deal about the client’s strengths, skills, positive resources, and helpful tools and techniques they have found beneficial during past challenging experiences. Building upon strengths that are already established within us is a great way to tackle difficult issues instead of starting all the way from scratch—and we all have many strengths existing within us, even if it doesn’t feel like it at times.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy can be a very helpful tool in managing negative and distorted thoughts about the self, harmful behaviors, as well as negative emotions because of these thoughts and behaviors. In short, thoughts, behaviors, and feelings are all connected and influence one another. Sid uses CBT to guide clients in recognizing their patterns in these various realms and helps them to actively change and substitute those negative patterns with more positive and self-accepting experiences.

Solution-Focused Therapy

Sid knows that finding solutions to problems can seem like a challenging process that can bring up feelings of frustration and hopelessness. The evidence-based therapeutic modality of Solution-Focused Therapy focuses on identifying exceptions to a client’s pervasive problem and building on them to make them less of the exception and more of the standard. Change in life is inevitable and constant; through empathic validation, collaborative brainstorming, and setting realistic goals, Sid can support you in finding ways to make change feel less daunting and more doable.

Mindfulness

In our fast-paced society that is hungry for productivity and instant gratification, it can be very hard to slow down our minds and bodies and find moments of calm. When we feel stressed, overwhelmed, too busy to even think the word “mindfulness,” this is when we need it most. Mindfulness is a way of bringing awareness to ourselves, our surroundings, our habits, our present moment, all without judgment or a belief of our thoughts or actions being “good” or “bad.” Sid uses mindfulness techniques in their therapy practice to encourage clients to learn how to tune into their present thoughts, feelings, and sensations in order to find more joy, self-acceptance, decrease stress levels, help regulate difficult emotions, and improve coping skills.

Sex Therapy

Sid strongly believes that all people have a right to pleasure and deserve a healthy, fulfilling, satisfying relationship to their bodies. As a Sex Therapist, Sid works with clients on issues of sexual function and helping clients get to the root of their issues to promote change as opposed to just sticking a band-aid on the symptoms. Sex Therapy attempts to address sexual function problems by enhancing clients’ focus on the many unique sensations and experiences that one can discover with themselves and with partners. Sid encourages clients to allow themselves to take risks and to expand their sexual curiosity, beliefs, emotions, and definitions of pleasure to allow for change to take place. Through thorough assessments, various mindfulness techniques, and take-home exercises, Sid can support clients in raising their awareness and connection to their minds, bodies, and sexual values.

Sid’s Hobbies and Passions

In their time away from providing therapy, Sid enjoys playing with clay at a local ceramics studio where they make functional wheel-thrown and hand-built pieces. Sid is also an avid plant parent, movie watcher, and food enjoyer. They welcome any and all favorite restaurant and/or recipe recommendations!