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Monday 10am - 4:30pm Tuesday 10am - 4:30pm Wednesday 11am - 3pm Thursday 10am - 4:30pm

Sara Ouimette California Psychotherapy

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Oakland, CA
Sara Ouimette California Psychotherapy

Depth psychotherapy and grief counseling for individual adults in Oakland, and virtually throughout California. I am based in the Bay Area.

Spiritual therapy for highly sensitive people and heathcare professionals facing burnout. 🙏🖤🥀🍄🦋
LMFT #93508 I am a licensed psychotherapist available to work online with anyone in California. Please visit my website at http://www.saraouimette.com
for more information about my practice.

09/15/2025

I’ve always felt the world a little more—
the quiet tension in a crowded room,
the ache behind someone’s smile,
the sudden beauty that takes my breath away.

I’ve been told I’m “too sensitive.”
Carl Jung called it innate sensitiveness—a permeable psyche.
A heart and mind that let the world in, sometimes all at once.

It can be exhausting. And lonely. And overwhelming.

But Jung also saw it as a gift:

“This excessive sensitiveness very often brings an enrichment of the personality and contributes more to its charm than to the undoing of a person’s character.”

Your sensitivity is not a flaw. It is your compass—guiding you toward beauty, empathy, creativity, and the deepest parts of yourself. 🌿✨

Discover what Carl Jung said about sensitive people and how his depth psychology offers insight into the highly sensitive person (HSP). Learn how sensitivity can be both a challenge and a gift, and how Jungian therapy in Oakland and online can help you embrace your sensitivity with compassion and st

09/09/2025

If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you may struggle with boundaries, relationships, or self-worth. Instead of learning “my needs matter,” you may have learned to silence yourself, manage other people’s emotions, or doubt whether you are truly lovable.

These aren’t flaws — they were survival strategies. But they can leave you feeling unseen, unsupported, and disconnected from your own worth.

Depth psychotherapy offers a space to be truly seen and validated, to grieve what was missing, and to begin practicing new ways of relating to yourself and others. Over time, this creates the foundation for unconditional self-love — something you may never have received in childhood, but can begin to cultivate now.

In my Oakland therapy practice, I help clients untangle from family patterns, set boundaries that hold, and reclaim a sense of authenticity and belonging.

Being seen may feel unfamiliar, but with the right support, healing is possible. 🌱

Healing from dysfunctional family trauma begins with reclaiming unconditional self-love. Learn how depth psychotherapy in Oakland can help you heal, set boundaries, and feel safe, seen, and whole again.

08/30/2025

Not every psychedelic journey feels blissful. Some take us into fear, panic, or the resurfacing of long-buried trauma. These “bad trips” can feel unbearable in the moment—like being broken open. 🌑

From a depth psychology perspective, though, these experiences are not failures. They are the psyche’s way of bringing unconscious or preverbal material into awareness, asking us to face what was once hidden.

With time, care, and compassion, what begins as chaos can become a doorway to healing—an invitation to meet ourselves more fully and move toward wholeness. 🌱

Learn how to transform a bad psychedelic trip into healing. Depth psychotherapy and integration can turn overwhelm into growth and self-understanding

08/21/2025

Spravato® is an FDA-approved nasal spray form of esketamine, used to treat depression that hasn’t responded to other medications. It works differently than traditional antidepressants—by affecting the brain’s glutamate system and creating new pathways for healing. ✨

But in my experience, the medicine is just the beginning. Recently, I’ve witnessed clients who had felt stuck for years begin to feel a shift—like a light cracking through after a long winter. They describe a softening, an opening, even moments of relief they never thought possible. 🌿

What has struck me most is how much more powerful these changes become when integrated. In depth psychotherapy, we make space for the visions, emotions, and sensations that surface during treatment. A strange image can reveal a forgotten part of the self. A wave of emotion can finally be released and transformed. A body sensation can become a doorway back into presence and trust.

Spravato can bring the spark. Integration helps that spark grow into something lasting—connection to self, to meaning, to life again. 💫

It feels like such a privilege to walk alongside people in this process, witnessing not just symptom relief but the deeper unfolding of healing.

Discover how Spravato and depth psychotherapy work together. Oakland integration therapy to transform symptoms into soulful healing.

08/11/2025

What if your dreams were trying to tell you something—and you finally listened?

In Jungian depth psychotherapy, we approach dreams as living messages from the unconscious, carrying truths the waking mind can’t always access. A dream might surface a buried grief, offer guidance during uncertainty, or reintroduce you to a part of yourself you’ve long forgotten.

In my Oakland practice, dream work is a collaborative exploration—listening to images, symbols, and feelings with curiosity and respect. We’re not rushing toward “the meaning” but allowing the psyche to speak in its own language and timing. Sometimes, that language changes everything.

Oakland Jungian therapist Sara Ouimette on dream work in depth psychotherapy—how dreams reveal hidden truths, guide healing, and connect you to your soul’s wisdom.

06/07/2025

Some seasons don’t make sense.
The light dims. The map disappears.
And nothing you used to reach for feels right anymore.

This isn’t failure.
This is the dark night of the soul.

A sacred unraveling.
A quiet, aching pause between who you were and who you’re becoming.

In depth therapy, we don’t rush this part.
We make space for it.
For the grief, the numbness, the not-knowing.
For the fire that burns what’s false, and the silence that speaks what’s true.

If you’re in that dark night—
If everything is falling apart—
Maybe it’s time to stop trying to fix yourself.
And start listening.

Your soul knows the way through.

https://www.saraouimette.com/blog/2025/6/6/the-dark-night-of-the-soul-a-depth-psychological-perspective

Experiencing a dark night of the soul? Learn how depth psychotherapy and spiritual therapy can support you through spiritual crisis, loss of meaning, and soul transformation. In-person and online therapy available in Oakland, CA.

05/23/2025

Ketamine is getting a lot of attention in the mental health field—and for good reason.
For some, it offers real relief. For others, it can be destabilizing, disorienting, or even spiritually overwhelming.

In my latest blog, I offer a grounded perspective on ketamine therapy—what it is, how it works, and why integration is essential.

As a depth psychotherapist trained in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, I don’t provide ketamine treatment—but I do work with clients to help them process and integrate what these experiences stir up. That often includes unprocessed trauma, unmet needs, or unexpected spiritual material.

I explore the history of ketamine, its role as the only currently legal psychedelic-like therapy in California, and some of the risks that can accompany its use—such as dissociation, overuse, and emotional bypassing. Most importantly, I speak to the vital role of integration, and how depth psychotherapy can help make meaning of what emerges in altered states by working symbolically, relationally, and somatically.

This piece is for therapists, seekers, and anyone curious about the deeper psychological and spiritual layers of psychedelic work.

https://www.saraouimette.com/blog/2025/5/22/ketamine-therapy-hope-hype-and-the-need-for-caution

Curious about ketamine therapy? Learn why integration is essential after psychedelic experiences. Depth psychotherapist Sara Ouimette offers grounded, soulful support for ketamine integration in Oakland and online.

05/16/2025

Shadow work isn’t sexy. It’s survival.

It’s not the candlelit ritual you saw on Instagram.
It’s crying in your car again because something old just got stirred up and won’t go back to sleep.
It’s rage in your throat that you were taught to swallow.
It’s grief in your bones for the version of you who never got to exist.

Shadow work is the real work.

Not because it makes you more enlightened or “healed,”
but because it invites you to stop abandoning the parts of you that have been waiting—sometimes for decades—to be seen.

It’s unlearning the roles you had to play.
It’s holding space for the contradiction of being both hurting and whole.
It’s learning how to stay with yourself, even when what arises is uncomfortable, raw, or not who you thought you were supposed to be.

I wrote about what shadow work really means—beyond the social media buzzwords and spiritual aesthetics.
This is the kind of healing that doesn’t look perfect.
But it’s real.
And that’s where something sacred begins.

If you’re feeling the stirrings of something deep—something that doesn’t have words yet—I hope this speaks to you.

https://www.saraouimette.com/blog/2025/5/16/what-shadow-work-really-means

Shadow work isn’t trendy—it’s transformative. Oakland depth psychotherapist Sara Ouimette offers a grounded, soulful perspective on what shadow work really is and how it supports healing, wholeness, and spiritual emergence.

05/08/2025

Some wounds don’t scream.
They whisper.
Late at night.
After a text goes unanswered.
In the hollow feeling you can’t explain.
In the way your chest tightens when you ask for something you’re not sure you’re allowed to need.

This is the ghost of the inner child—the part of you that didn’t get what they needed, but never stopped longing.

In depth psychotherapy, we welcome back the parts that were left behind.

Because the ghost doesn’t want to hurt you.
She wants to come home.

The ghost becomes a guest.
The guest becomes a guide.

https://www.saraouimette.com/blog/2025/5/7/-the-inner-child-complex-trauma

Struggling with unmet childhood needs or emotional loneliness? Learn how depth psychotherapy can support adults with complex trauma.

05/06/2025

What is soul, really?
It’s a word we use often. But when we pause to feel into it, soul is not a thing we have. It’s a presence. A remembering. A whisper beneath the noise of the world.

Soul is what aches for beauty. What trembles before mystery. What grieves and dreams and dares to hope.

In therapy, I often work with soul loss — the way trauma, neglect, or oppression can sever us from the deep aliveness within. But here’s what I’ve learned: what’s lost can be found.

Soul retrieval isn’t about fixing you. It’s about calling your tenderness, your longing, your truth back home.

You are not broken.
You are being summoned.

If these words speak to something inside you, you’re not alone. I offer depth-oriented spiritual therapy in Oakland and across California. Let’s begin.

https://www.saraouimette.com/blog/2025/4/29/what-is-soul

Explore the meaning of soul through Indigenous wisdom, Jungian psychology, and spiritual traditions. Learn about soul loss, soul retrieval, and the path of emergence therapy in Oakland, CA.

04/29/2025

As therapists, we’re taught to hold grief — but no one teaches us how to hold our own.

When I lost a client, it shook me.
The grief was complicated. The guilt was heavy. The silence was deafening.

We don’t talk enough about what it means to lose someone we’ve sat with, cared for, and witnessed in their most vulnerable moments.

In my latest blog, I write about the quiet, disenfranchised grief therapists carry — and why it matters that we name it.

If you’re a therapist who’s grieving — or if you’ve ever wondered about the invisible weight we sometimes hold — I hope this will help you feel seen.

Grieving the death of a client can be an isolating experience for therapists. Learn about disenfranchised grief, client loss, and how grief counseling or professional consultation can help therapists and healthcare professionals heal.

04/27/2025

Real Healing Can’t Be Automated.

We live in a time where AI can answer your questions, write your emails, and even offer “therapy” at two in the morning.

But in depth psychotherapy, the relationship is the healing.

It’s not just about listening to words.
It’s about attuning to the spaces between them.
It’s about noticing the grief behind the silence, the hope tucked inside the hesitation, the unconscious material waiting to be met with care.

Highly sensitive people especially know when they’re truly felt — and when they’re not.

A chatbot can generate reflections.
But it can’t feel with you.
It can’t sit in your sorrow without rushing to fix it.
It can’t offer the steady human presence that allows real transformation to take root.

Healing is relational.
Healing is human.
And no matter how advanced technology becomes, that will never change.

Highly sensitive? Grieving? Sara Ouimette, LMFT shares why true therapy - rooted in deep listening, human care, and the unconscious - can never be replaced by AI. Serving Oakland and California online.

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Oakland, CA

Opening Hours

Monday	10am - 4:30pm
Tuesday	10am - 4:30pm
Wednesday	11am - 3pm
Thursday	10am - 4:30pm

Telephone

+15108597724

Website

http://www.saraouimette.com/

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My Story

Hi, I'm Sara Ouimette (pronounced "we met"), a psychotherapist on the Oakland/Berkeley border in CA. I work primarily with people who fear judgment or misunderstanding based on their experiences, traumas, spiritual identity, beliefs, gender or lifestyle choices. I specialize in women's issues, men’s issues, various forms of PTSD, highly sensitive people, cannabis use and abuse, spirituality, and both the benefits and challenges associated with the use of psychedelic substances. A large portion of my clients are Millennials/Gen Xers who live lives full of instant information, external validation, overwhelm, and overstimulation. People come to see me for symptoms of anxiety & depression, trauma, relationship challenges, spiritual "emergence" or emergency, cannabis use, and challenging or expansive experiences with psychedelic substances. My style is warm, interactive, non-judgmental, curious, compassionate, and direct.

My training has primarily been in psychodynamic, psychoanalytic, and transpersonal psychologies. I believe our earliest experiences have a profound impact on the present, and that by gaining insight into the origins of our fears and negative beliefs, we can begin to free ourselves from them. My work is also trauma-informed and attachment-based. I often speak to what is happening in the present moment between myself and my client. Because trauma is held in the body, I also carefully engage with what my clients experience somatically.

Additionally, I work for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies on their study using M**A therapy for PTSD. I am intimately familiar with the protocol being used in this type of therapy, which gives me great insight into what psychedelic substances have to offer in a therapeutic setting. If you have accessed underground psychedelic therapy, or you had a life-changing psychedelic experience (for better or worse) and want a place to integrate and/or understand what you experienced, please get in touch to learn more.