About SarahAbout Sarah Cushing, Registered PsychotherapistCurious, direct, and genuinely human.
I am Sarah Cushing, a Registered Psychotherapist and the founder of Liminal Bloom. I work with people navigating eating disorders, body image, trauma, and the questions that live beneath symptoms: Who am I? What do I want? What has been shaping me? I see clients in person at 100 Centrepointe in Nepean/Ottawa and virtually across Ontario. My practice is relational, depth-oriented, and grounded in both clinical training and a real respect for the complexity of being human.
The threshold between no longer and not yet.
The word liminal refers to a threshold: a passage where the old form has loosened but the new one has not yet taken shape. It is often uncomfortable, disorienting, and strangely alive. My own life has moved through several of these thresholds, and I know what it is to stand in an opening without knowing exactly what comes next.
I chose Liminal Bloom because the name honors that process. Therapy is rarely about fixing a person. More often, it is about making room for what is trying to emerge, even when emergence feels messy or uncertain. The bloom is not the finish line; it is what becomes possible when something is tended carefully enough to grow.
The body holds what words cannot always reach.
My work with eating disorders, body image, and trauma is grounded in CBT-E, somatic approaches, and EMDR. I pay close attention to what the body is doing, not because symptoms live only in tissue, but because so much of what we carry shows up in breath, posture, gesture, and sensation.
My history as a competitive athlete is one part of my story. It taught me a lot about discipline, identity, and the body as something to train, optimize, and perform with. It also left me with a real understanding of how tightly food, body, control, and identity can wind together. Reclaiming movement as pleasure, rest, expression, and communication became important in my own life, and it informs how I work with the mind-body split, but it does not define my clinical expertise.
No one heals in a vacuum.
My background in anthropology and sociology taught me to look beyond the individual. We are shaped by the families, communities, cultures, and systems of power we move through - by norms around bodies, gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, success, and worth.
In therapy, I bring that lens into the room with curiosity and care. We may explore the stories you have inherited about who you should be, the structures that have informed what feels possible for you, and the ways you have had to adapt in order to survive. Understanding these contexts can soften shame and restore a sense of agency.
I am not a blank screen, and you do not have to perform wellness.
I am a relational therapist, which means I bring myself into the room. I am warm, curious, perceptive, and direct when directness helps. I am also comfortable with silence, contradiction, and the parts of a story that do not yet make sense. Therapy with me is a conversation between two real people, not a clinical performance.
You do not need to arrive with the right words or a perfectly articulated goal. You can be guarded, grieving, furious, numb, hopeful, or all of the above. I value honesty, autonomy, and nuance, and I believe some of the most important work happens when we let a contradiction sit long enough to understand what it is trying to say.
Humour has a place here too. Depth does not have to mean heaviness every minute. We will laugh sometimes, cry sometimes, and probably get a little angry at the things that have hurt you. We move at your pace, with attention to safety, consent, and nervous system regulation.
I have a life outside the room too.
I am someone who needs movement, nature, meaningful conversation, and time with the people and animals I love to feel fully human. I read and write to think. I travel when I can. I value humour and the kind of honesty that makes a room feel safer, not more exposed.
I mention this because therapy is a human relationship. It helps to know that the person across from you is a person too.
Grounded in study, shaped by lived experience.
Trainings
- EMDR - basic training completed with an EMDRIA-approved training program; EMDR-trained clinician
- Introduction to Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy (ATMA Cena)
- Advanced Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy (ATMA Cena)
- Roots of Healing - Psilocybin Facilitator Training (Gaia Wellness, in progress)
Informed by
Continuing education in IFS, Polyvagal, CPT, CBT-E, ACT, and DBT-informed practices.
If something here resonates,reach out.
Consultations are complimentary and held over a brief phone call, to see whether we feel like a fit for the work ahead. In-person sessions are held at 100 Centrepointe in Nepean/Ottawa; virtual sessions are available across Ontario.