Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Sarkis

I’m a psychologist by training, a certified executive and performance coach by practice, and the Senior Director of Psychology and Performance at EXOS. I also moonlight as a writer and speaker. 

As a clinical psychologist, I learned and studied about psychological pathology: what happens when shit goes wrong. And believe me, a lot can go wrong.

In the decades I trained as a psychologist, I never had a class on happiness, contentment, or the science of wellness. I learned how to understand suffering, how to diagnose it, and how to sit with it. These are valuable skills, and I am so grateful to have this foundation.

But the truth is, I tired of the emphasis on suffering and on pathology. I felt restless and confined by those constraints. So, I went rogue.

I started with these questions:

• Is a sense of wellness even attainable anymore?
  
• Is wellness distinct from the absence of feeling like shit?
• What really, down deep, controls our behavior?
• Can we influence how we metabolize our experiences?
• And, what are the outer limits of our human potential when we use a radically different compass?

This shift in focus changed my life in ways I could not have imagined.

With this shift, I began to collaborate with CEOs, executives, professional athletes, coaches, and teams with moonshot dreams on the psychological game of greatness.

I’m indebted to these people. The journey to understand, unravel, and optimize our minds has been the true joy of my professional career.

From this journey I have emerged a hybrid— part shrink, part performance consultant, part Jedi of the unconscious.

Areas of Expertise

• Burnout & Chronic Stress – Neurobiology, Implications & Strategies
• Performance Anxiety
• Career Transition
• Leadership Development
• Group Dynamics & Optimization
• Team Cohesion Development
• The Adaptive Unconscious in Decision Making- Biases, Blind Spots, and The Fix
• Strategy & Implementation of Corporate & Organizational Culture
• Emotional Intelligence & Leadership
• Team & Individual Consultation on Wellness Plan to Optimize Performance

If this work is something you are interested in, connect with me. I’m available for individual, team, and organizational collaboration.

You can also contact me via email, though please do not email me to set up an initial therapy appointment, as it is not a confidential form of communication.

Lastly, here are 5 Facts You Should Know About Me. 

Background

I received my MA from Boston College where I studied Counseling Psychology. I then began my doctoral training at George Washington University with an emphasis on Adult Psychotherapy from a psychoanalytic perspective.

Upon completion of my doctoral studies, I completed my internship and post-doctoral fellowship training at two inpatient psychiatric hospitals in the Boston area. There, I worked with people who were suffering from the most severe and retractable forms of mental illness.

Those experiences taught me the deep and enduring value of comprehensive and collaborative care from a multi-disciplinary perspective. I carry those lessons with me to my current work in my private practice, where I emphasize and utilize my partnerships with physicians, naturopaths, and functional medicine doctors and nutritionists to provide the best standard of care.

In addition to my psychology training, I’ve studied extensively the use of mindfulness, functional medicine, hormones, and how food, medicine, and mood are interconnected.

My influences include Dr.’s Hyman, Benson, Kabat-Zinn, Maté, Gervais, and Gordon, as well as Tara Brach, Brené Brown, Irvin Yalom, Howard Stern, Steven Kotler, and Bruce Springsteen, to name only a few.

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