Meet Sarah (she/her)

Sarah, standing in a doorway, smiling

Hello :)

I’m Sarah Newbold, a counsellor, social worker, writer, and founder of Progressive Therapeutic Counselling.

I’ve worked in mental health and community services for more than 20 years across counselling, trauma, crisis support, violence prevention, relationships, and community care.

I care deeply about my work and the people I work with.

It’s important to be upfront & transparent about the areas I do not work within. Due to personal family history, I do not provide counselling around any issues to do with dementia or cognitive decline, as I do not feel I can offer the quality of therapeutic support people deserve in that space.

I am genuinely interested in people, relationships, power, survival, intimacy, grief, identity, bodies, community, and the complicated ways human beings try to care for themselves and each other under difficult conditions.

A lot of the people who find their way to me are carrying complicated lives. Trauma. Burnout. Grief. Relational harm. Loneliness. Neurodivergence. Emotional exhaustion. Identity. The pressure of trying to function in systems that often feel disconnected from actual human needs.

I work with people across many different identities, communities, bodies, relationship structures, and ways of living.

My work often explores relational complexity, including:

  • queer relationships and identity

  • kink, BDSM, and consensual power exchange

  • AI, parasocial, and digital relationships

  • coercive control and emotional abuse

  • abortion and reproductive experiences

  • hormonal mental health and peri/menopause

  • grief, burnout, embodiment, intimacy, and relational safety

I love working in these spaces. I think they are some of the most important conversations happening right now, and I believe people deserve support that can genuinely hold the complexity of them.

I’m less interested in pathologising people, and more interested in understanding context, patterns, survival, relationships, nervous systems, embodiment, and what safety, agency, connection, or relief might look like now.

My work is queer-affirming, trauma-informed, sex-positive, neurodivergent-affirming, anti-racist, disability-aware, and grounded in respect for people’s autonomy, dignity, complexity, and lived experience.

I believe relationships matter. Community matters. Material conditions matter. The body matters. Power matters. The systems people live within matter.

I live and work on unceded Dja Dja Wurrung Country, and for the past 7 years have contributed 2% of profits as part of the Pay The Rent movement to:

Outside of work, I live in regional Victoria with my dog Raya. I love spending genuinely quality chill time with the people I love, hiking, writing, reading, cooking and getting feisty over politics.

Sarah in the media