Sarah Newbold
Progressive Therapeutic Counselling
I'm Sarah (she/her), a counsellor, social worker, and writer, and the founder of Progressive Therapeutic Counselling.
I've worked in mental health and community services for over twenty years, across trauma, relationships, crisis support, and violence prevention.
My work is built on a simple belief: people deserve counselling that feels human and emotionally safe; not clinical, performative, or distant.
I don't believe in specialties when it comes to this kind of work.
People don't arrive in neat categories. But there are things I understand deeply and care about, and these are some of them:
Relationships, intimacy, and relational harm
The patterns that repeat, the closeness that's hard to reach or hard to trust, the relationships that left a mark. This includes coercive control, emotional abuse, and stalking, and the particular exhaustion of explaining your own reality to yourself to check it still holds.Queer relationships, identity, and community
Being understood without having to translate yourself first. Whatever your relationships, identity, or history look like, you won't have to educate me to be met.Sex, kink, and consensual power exchange
BDSM, power exchange, and relationship structures outside the monogamous default, approached as part of a whole life rather than a problem to be solved. No flinching, no assumptions.Neurodivergence
Living, loving, and working in systems that weren't built for how your mind works, and the cost of constantly adapting to them.Bodies, hormones, and reproductive experience
Abortion, reproductive experiences, hormonal mental health, and peri and menopause. Living in a body that no longer feels predictable or easy to inhabit.AI, parasocial, and digital relationships
The connections that form through a screen are real, and they matter. I work with them as real relationships, not as something to be embarrassed about.Grief, burnout, and loneliness
The emotional exhaustion many people carry quietly through modern life, and the kind of tiredness that rest alone doesn't fix.
I work across a range of life issues, but these are my key areas of interest and passion:
Values are not branding to me.
They shape how people are spoken to, understood, believed, respected, and cared for.
I try to ensure the way I work is genuinely aligned with the values I speak about, both inside and outside the counselling room.
The values below are fundamental to who I am as a person, and as a practitioner:
Anti Racist
Sex & Kink +
Neuro +
Pro choice
Queer +
Disability +
Fees
Individual counselling & relational safety sessions
Standard rate: $155
Financial accessibility rate: $115
I want counselling to remain accessible where possible. The lower rate is available to anyone who needs it, without proof of financial circumstance or explanation required. I operate on a system of respect & trust.
Relationship therapy
2 people: $230
3 people: $340
4 people: $450
Clinical supervision
$190
I offer online sessions via secure telehealth across Australia.
I do not currently offer Medicare rebates or work with private health insurance providers.
Pay the Rent
For the past 7 years PTC has contributed 2% of profits as part of the Pay The Rent movement and repatriations to:
The Jilya Institute
Decolonise Sex Work AU
Sarah in the media
