Sarah O'Sullivan, AASW

Sarah O'Sullivan is an AASW social worker with six years of practice experience. She draws on more than a decade of lived experience working in Queensland Health and community services, and on her own journey with chronic mental health. This background shapes how she listens and responds to people who are feeling overwhelmed or stuck.

Sarah focuses on everyday pressures like stress and anxiety, and on longer-term struggles such as depression, addiction and trauma. She also helps parents with capacity-building and relapse prevention planning. Her work pays attention to attachment and relationship patterns that influence how people cope day to day.

In sessions she aims for clear, straightforward conversations. People can expect to talk about what is happening now, and about practical steps to change small habits and responses. She uses narrative and client-centred ideas to help people make sense of difficult experiences and find ways to try things differently.

Sarah also offers advocacy, functional capacity assessments using the Allen's model of cognitive function, and complex report writing for legal or NDIS processes. She can produce domestic violence perpetrator mapping informed by the Safe and Together model to support family court matters when appropriate.

Her approach combines mindfulness practices, motivational interviewing and attachment-based perspectives. She works to help each person set manageable goals and to build sustainable routines that support everyday wellbeing.

How Sarah's approaches work in online sessions

Attachment-based work looks at how early relationships shape current patterns of relating and self-soothing. It can help people who struggle with feelings of abandonment, attachment concerns or repeating relationship cycles. Client-centred therapy focuses on being heard and understood; the counsellor follows the person's lead and supports them to find their own solutions. Mindfulness therapy teaches simple practices to notice thoughts and urges without immediately reacting, which can help with anxiety, stress and relapse prevention.

Finding the right approach is part of the therapeutic process. Sarah will discuss goals, preferences and needs, and together they will decide which methods to try. That collaboration means plans can change as the work progresses and as different strategies are tested.

The biography does not list the specific online or in-person formats offered, so confirm available session types before booking. Online work can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy week, reduce travel time and allow quicker check-ins between appointments. It can also allow different ways of practising mindfulness or doing brief coaching work that fit into everyday life.