Katie Sharpe, MA, LMFT
“The most meaningful shift I witness in this work is when someone realizes they have more agency in their life and experiences than they ever believed.”
My path into this work wasn’t just academic. It was lived. I came to it through my own seasons of self-doubt, identity loss, and the kind of reckoning that doesn’t announce itself politely. At some point, I stopped being able to outrun the questions I’d been avoiding. About meaning, about what I wanted, and about the ways I’d been complicit in a life that wasn’t serving me.
That last part was the hardest: seeing not just what had happened to me, but what I had been doing, or not doing, to create the obstacles in my way. Taking ownership of that, without collapsing into shame, changed everything. It’s also the thread that runs through all my clinical work.
The mind-body connection in my work didn’t come from a textbook. It came from a Crohn’s disease diagnosis that made it impossible to keep treating my body like it was separate from everything I was feeling. I needed to get serious about how I was managing my stress and ideas about myself and my life.
So when someone sitting across from me looks fine on paper but feels like they’re quietly unraveling, I don’t flinch. I know that place. And I know what it actually takes to move through it.
I’m direct and honest about what I see. But I’m also genuinely curious about you, not as a presenting problem to solve, but as someone who wants to feel more at home in who they are.
I’m deeply invested in whether something actually shifts for you, not just whether you feel heard at the end of a session.
A significant part of the work is teaching. I help clients build a working map of their own nervous system. Understanding how they respond under stress, which survival responses they default to, and what pulls them out of regulation. That becomes something you use in your daily life. Not just something you understand in theory.
The goal isn’t insight for its own sake. It’s building the capacity to respond differently, with more intention, more self-trust, and more agency than you came in with.
“Be curious, not judgmental”A guiding principle
I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist working with individuals and couples. My graduate training emphasized somatic psychotherapy, with a foundation in Polyvagal Theory, an approach I’ve continued to develop and integrate alongside relational, attachment-based, Enneagram-informed, and existential frameworks.
License information
California LMFT #141197
Utah LMFT #14231321-390
“Therapy that goes beyond insight, and creates real change.”Depth-oriented, active psychotherapy · Walnut Creek, CA
Ready to do something different?
A free 20-minute consultation is the easiest first step.
Book a Free Consultation