ABOUT ME
Sara Hart Schultz, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor
I grew up on a lake in the woods in rural northern Minnesota, where my deep appreciation for and connection to nature was cultivated. I have fond memories of being outside and having nothing to do, just being outside, wholly present with my surroundings. I can vividly recall the sound of the water, the reflections of the trees along the shoreline, the birds and the wind, a deep awareness of and connection to a sense of something greater. I enjoyed my mother's flower garden, my father's vegetable garden, running with my twin sister and brother in the woods, canoeing, swimming at the point, swinging in the hammock we had tied between two birch trees in the front yard where I would lay and watch the clouds go by for hours, climbing trees, the walking path. These early childhood experiences continue to be some of my favorite resources today, and cultivated to my passion for bringing my clients into contact with nature, especially in our tech driven world.
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My mental health took a downward turn as I became a teenager, endured trauma, and witnessing the lasting impacts of intergenerational trauma on the people in my community. I struggled greatly, and for a long time. Once I got help, I tried really hard to change my patterns, and I eventually found relief, as well as great inspiration and hope for my future. I remember declaring to myself, "I will be in THAT chair someday, not this one." (Jokes on me, I'm in both chairs now, and I probably always will be!). Suffice it to say, I would not be here today if it were not for the support of my therapist at that time in my life. I became very fascinated by and interested in the human mind, thirsty for answers to big questions like how the mind works, why we are the way we are, how do we end up in the places we end up, and how can we change and shape our own experiences, the experiences of others. I was in awe of my own resilience and capacity for change, and became determined to learn how to help cultivate and encourage the same resilience and recovery in others. I was tested and confirmed ADHD at 17 but it took me years to accept and understand this diagnosis and what it meant for me personally.
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I decided to pursue the field of psychology when I was 16 years old, and it has been my special interest ever since. I completed my Bachelor's of Science Degree in Psychology from 2009-2012 at Bemidji State University. From there I moved to Saint Cloud, MN to pursue and complete my Master's of Science in Community Counseling, which I finished in 2014.
My journey as a counselor started at a small outpatient private practice, and at an inpatient co-occurring mental health and substance use disorder adolescent residential treatment program. I then worked in community mental health as a generalist, where I gained experience working with a very wide range of ages and clinical populations. I also joined an intensive outpatient adherent Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) team and focused on treating BPD and other emotional/behavioral dysregulation, as well as integrating Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD into the DBT treatment, for a period of about 6 years. I am deeply grateful for these early career experiences where I was able to hone my skills as a clinician, colleague, and personally as well.
I moved to Stillwater, MN, my current home, in 2020. I have been in private practice since 2022. I continue to be a forever student, and I am currently really excited about and focusing on honing my skills in somatic and body-based trauma therapies, neuroscience informed interventions, and the role of spirituality in healing and resilience. Personally, I really enjoy being dog-mom to my two precious miniature dachshunds (River and Daisy). Hobbies of mine include reading, baking, hiking and outdoor exploration, getting on the river, hunting for Lake Superior agates, walking and training the dogs, spending time with my family, growing in Christ, live music, spinning poi, and last but certainly not least, cleaning and making my living spaces cozy and comfortable (my fam calls it "the Sara touch" haha!).
“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed. “ —Alice Walker