Sara Ouimette California Psychotherapy

02/11/2026

Does therapy even work—especially if you’ve already tried?

This is a question I hear from thoughtful, self-aware people who have done years of work and still feel stuck. If therapy hasn’t brought the relief you hoped for, it’s easy to assume something is wrong with you.

In this post, I explore why therapy sometimes falls short—and why the therapeutic relationship is often the most important part of trauma healing. Real change doesn’t usually come from insight alone. It comes from feeling emotionally safe, understood, and met over time.

If you’ve felt unseen or unchanged in therapy before, this reflection is for you.

Does therapy really help trauma? A depth psychotherapist reflects on why therapy sometimes fails—and what actually allows healing to unfold.

02/02/2026

In my work as a depth psychotherapist, I’ve long relied on insight, relationship, and meaning-making as pathways to healing. Over time, it’s become increasingly clear that trauma does not live only in the mind—it also lives in the body and nervous system.

In this post, I share how I’m beginning to integrate somatic therapy into my trauma therapy work, informed by polyvagal theory and an understanding of nervous system dynamics. This approach expands the therapeutic frame by including bodily experience alongside narrative, emotion, and unconscious material.

Somatic trauma therapy doesn’t replace insight-oriented work—it deepens it. By attending to how trauma is held in the nervous system, therapy can become more comprehensive, responsive, and grounded in lived experience. 🌱

Explore how somatic trauma therapy supports nervous system healing and deep emotional repair by gently integrating the body into depth psychotherapy.

01/04/2026

Many people know IFS therapy—working with inner critics, protectors, and vulnerable younger selves. In my practice as a Jungian depth therapist in Oakland, I approach trauma healing in a similar way, informed by Donald Kalsched’s work on the protective psyche.

Depth therapy often feels like IFS, but it’s less formulaic. It moves with the psyche’s own timing, through dreams, symbols, and relational exploration.

This approach helps highly sensitive and trauma-shaped clients honor their inner protectors, find safety, and reconnect with a compassionate inner Self.

Curious how depth therapy can support your trauma healing in a way that respects your inner world? Read my full blog to explore how depth therapy and IFS intersect—and how it can transform your relationship with your inner parts.

Explore how trauma healing in Jungian depth therapy compares to IFS—parts work, protectors, and a relational, non-formulaic approach in Oakland.

12/04/2025

Depth therapy is, in many ways, a spiritual practice—for both client and therapist.

Not in a religious sense, but in the way it invites us to sit with what’s been exiled: grief, shadow, unmet needs, the body’s knowing, and the stories that shaped us. Clinically, this work engages the unconscious, attachment patterns, and the symbolic life. But it also asks for something more tender: presence, honesty, and the courage to turn inward.

In depth psychotherapy, both therapist and client enter a shared process of meaning-making. The client discovers the parts of self that have gone underground; the therapist listens with their full psyche, allowing the work to transform them as well.

This is what makes depth therapy spiritual: it’s relational, embodied, and oriented toward wholeness. A slow return to the self that has been waiting beneath the coping.

If you’re seeking a deeper, more imaginative form of healing—one that honors both psychology and soul—this is the work. 🌀

Discover why depth therapy is inherently spiritual. Explore Jungian, soul-centered healing, shadow work, and meaning-making in therapy.

12/01/2025

So many women say they’re “burnt out,” but what I’m seeing in the therapy room is something older and quieter—grief.
Not grief from death, but grief from absence.
The grief of being the strong one since childhood.
The grief of never being held, only useful.
The grief that hides under competence, sensitivity, and perfectionism.

Burnout says I’ve given too much.
Grief says I never received enough.

Women who look the most “together” are often carrying the heaviest, most invisible losses—exhaustion that sleep can’t fix, numbness that masks a flickering self they left behind to survive.

Depth therapy gives language to what was never named.
It lets the strong one crumble.
It lets grief speak.
And when it does, something alive returns.

Many women who think they’re “burnt out” are actually carrying hidden grief—especially sensitive, high-achieving women. Learn how unspoken loss shows up as exhaustion, how depth psychotherapy reveals what’s underneath, and why healing requires being witnessed, not stronger.

11/24/2025

The holidays land like a bruise for a lot of people.
Most won’t say it out loud, but I hear it every year in my office — that mix of gratitude and grief that doesn’t know where to go.

For some, it’s missing someone who’s gone.
For others, it’s the family they still hope will be different.
And for many women, it’s the pressure to hold everything together while feeling like they’re coming apart.

The culture keeps saying “be grateful,” but your body remembers the truth.
And sometimes the truth is: this season hurts.

This blog is about that collision — the way gratitude and grief show up at the same time, uninvited, loud, honest.
And how nothing about it means you’re doing anything wrong.

If the holidays make you feel more human than you want to admit, this one’s for you.

Explore why the holidays intensify grief, stress, and family pressure, and how therapy can help you navigate loss, expectations, and emotional overwhelm.

11/14/2025

Psychedelic therapy is evolving faster than our field can keep up with—and many of us are feeling both the promise and the unease.

After years of working in psychedelic research beginning in 2016, and later training in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, I found myself deeply moved by what these medicines can unlock… and equally aware of the psychological, relational, and ethical complexities they amplify.

In altered states, the psyche is wide open. Transference is heightened, projections are intensified, and the therapist’s influence becomes enormous. When this isn’t held with a trauma informed lens and a grounded sense of humility, clients can be left overwhelmed—or harmed in ways that are easy to miss until much later.

That’s ultimately why I chose not to become a psychedelic therapist, despite believing in the therapeutic potential of these medicines.
Instead, I chose the work that feels most aligned with my training as a depth psychotherapist: psychedelic integration.

Integration is where the real meaning-making happens. It’s where clients metabolize their experiences, make sense of the symbolic material, and bring insights into their everyday lives with safety and support. It’s where healing becomes sustainable.

In my latest blog, I share my own journey with this decision—what I witnessed in the field, what concerns me, what inspires me, and why I believe depth-oriented clinicians have such an essential role to play in the future of psychedelic care.

Oakland depth psychotherapist Sara Ouimette reflects on her journey through psychedelic science, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, and why she chose to focus on integration work. A thoughtful look at both the promise and the shadow of psychedelic therapy—and the wisdom of moving at the pace of the ...

11/02/2025

Sometimes in therapy—and in my own life—I feel something stir that’s older than the moment. An ache, a silence, a heaviness that doesn’t belong just to one person. This is intergenerational trauma—the way grief, fear, and shame move quietly through families, shaping how we love, cope, and see ourselves.

I’ve spent years tracing my own threads back through generations—learning that some of what I carried wasn’t mine alone. The body remembers what the family forgot to speak. Depth psychotherapy helps us turn toward these invisible inheritances with tenderness, to listen for what’s been buried, and to let it move through.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about witnessing what was too heavy for our ancestors to hold, and giving it space to breathe. When we name what couldn’t be named, something softens. We stop repeating what no longer serves and begin to pass down something new—consciousness, compassion, and freedom.

Healing intergenerational trauma is an act of remembrance and release. A way of saying, with love: it can end here.

https://www.saraouimette.com/blog/2025/11/2/healing-the-wounds-we-inherit-a-depth-psychotherapy-approach-to-intergenerational-trauma

Discover how intergenerational trauma shapes emotions and relationships across generations. Learn how depth psychotherapy helps bring unconscious family patterns to light, transforming inherited pain into healing and self-understanding.

10/28/2025

For many highly sensitive people, perfectionism isn’t really about achievement—it’s about safety.

It’s the quiet armor we begin to build early in life to protect ourselves from criticism, rejection, or shame. If we can just be good enough—kind enough, competent enough, flawless enough—maybe we’ll finally feel like we belong.

But perfectionism comes at a cost. It keeps us striving and self-editing, forever chasing approval while losing touch with our spontaneity, creativity, and joy.

In my work with sensitive clients, I often see perfectionism as a form of devotion—an unconscious attempt to preserve love or prevent chaos. Depth psychotherapy invites us to meet this pattern with compassion rather than judgment. To listen to the inner child who believed being perfect was the only way to be loved. To soften the inner critic that still whispers, “You haven’t done enough.”

Healing perfectionism is about returning to your wholeness—the parts of you that ache, create, laugh, and long to rest.

When we are truly seen, not for what we do but for who we are, something inside begins to breathe again.

If you identify as a highly sensitive person caught in the loop of perfectionism, this piece might speak to you.

🕊 Read the full blog here: https://www.saraouimette.com/blog/2025/10/28/perfectionism-in-highly-sensitive-people-how-depth-psychotherapy-helps-you-come-home-to-yourself

10/19/2025

There’s a story I keep coming back to—Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Stone Child. A child left in the cold, forgotten or lost, slowly turning to stone. Still alive, still waiting—just frozen.

In depth psychotherapy, I often meet adults carrying their own Stone Child—the part of themselves that shut down when life was too painful, the part that learned to survive by numbing out. She’s not broken. She’s waiting for warmth, patience, and care.

Trauma-focused Jungian therapy is about finding her again. Seeing her, listening to her, letting her know she’s safe. It’s in that gentle, relational work that the frozen parts of ourselves begin to soften. The heart begins to beat again. We learn to feel, to trust, to be fully alive.

Even what feels lost can come back to life—if someone stays, if someone listens, if we dare to care for ourselves. ❤️‍🩹🔥

From Frozen to Feeling explores the myth of the Stone Child through the lens of trauma therapy. Learn how Jungian depth psychotherapy and inner child therapy can help heal childhood trauma, recover emotional connection, and restore inner warmth.

10/15/2025

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” - Carl Jung

I often think about that when I consider how our culture relates to cannabis today. It’s everywhere—used to unwind, to spark creativity, to soothe anxiety, to feel a little lighter in an unbearably heavy world.

If Jung were alive now, what might he say about this collective relationship?
Perhaps he’d see cannabis as a mirror, reflecting both our longing for meaning and our avoidance of pain.

When used unconsciously, it can become another way to escape the inner work the soul demands. But when approached intentionally—with curiosity, reverence, and reflection—it can serve as a doorway to the unconscious, offering a glimpse of what seeks healing.

My latest blog explores:
🌿 Addiction as a crisis of meaning
🌿 Cannabis as a door, not a home
🌿 The collective shadow of cannabis prohibition
🌿 What intentional use can teach us about the psyche

Jung might remind us that true transformation doesn’t come from what alters our consciousness, but from what we do with what we see there.

Cannabis can open the door—but the courage to enter, to feel, to integrate—that’s where healing begins.

https://www.saraouimette.com/blog/2025/10/14/what-would-carl-jung-say-about-cannabis-today

Explore cannabis through a Jungian lens—addiction as soul loss, intentional use, and the collective shadow. Depth psychotherapy in Oakland, CA.

10/12/2025

As October deepens and the nights grow darker, I find myself thinking about the ancient roots of Halloween—long before the costumes and candy.
At its core, this time of year has always been about death, mystery, and the unseen—about honoring what we can’t fully understand or control. 👻

In depth psychotherapy, we work with the same terrain.
We turn toward the shadow: grief that lingers, trauma that feels like another world, memories that still haunt the body.
Much like the old Samhain fires that once burned through the night, therapy becomes a sacred container where we can face what’s been exiled from awareness—and find that even in darkness, something vital and alive remains. 🎃

Halloween reminds us that fear isn’t an enemy to be conquered, and death isn’t a mistake to be denied.
They are both thresholds—portals to deeper meaning, if we dare to look. 🕯️

If you’re drawn to explore your own shadow, or if you sense something stirring beneath the surface this time of year, you might find this piece meaningful:

“Halloween, Trauma, and the Unseen: A Depth Therapy Perspective”

https://www.saraouimette.com/blog/2025/10/11/halloween-trauma-and-the-unseen-a-depth-therapy-perspective

Explore the history of Halloween through a depth therapy lens. Learn how trauma, grief, and shadow work connect to this ancient ritual of the unseen.