About Sarah
Sarah Johnston Margarida offers calm, practical support for people facing stress, anxiety, addiction, grief, career shifts, and big life changes. She is a licensed clinical social worker - LCSW - practicing in Maryland and focuses on helping individuals regain balance and move forward one step at a time. Sarah uses straightforward, goal-oriented work to ease overwhelming feelings.
Sessions focus on what matters now and on building skills that fit day-to-day life.
Background and approach
She encourages clear communication, healthier habits, and small changes that add up. Her approach blends client-centered listening with tools from cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness. That means she listens first, then helps people notice patterns of thought and try new ways of responding.
Motivational interviewing and solution-focused strategies are used when clients want to clarify goals or make concrete changes faster. Sarah has five years of clinical experience working with adults through difficult transitions. She has supported people coping with addiction, relationship issues, body image concerns, caregiving stress, and separation or divorce.
She also helps with attachment worries, forgiveness work, and fertility-related stress. Sessions are offered through a range of online formats so people can fit therapy into busy lives. She speaks English and practices in Maryland.
To begin, clients complete a short matching questionnaire and schedule a time that works for them.
Approaches and online care that fit everyday life
Client-centered therapy begins by focusing on the person's experience and values. The therapist listens closely and helps people set goals that reflect what matters most to them. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect and teaches practical tools to change unhelpful patterns. It is often used for anxiety, stress, and mood concerns.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to try methods that match their needs and preferences. That means adjusting techniques over time and choosing options that feel useful for the client’s goals.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to make therapy flexible. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation, phone works well when bandwidth is limited, quick live chat can be used for shorter check-ins, and messaging lets people share thoughts between sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy schedules and different routines.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 5 years
- Licensed
- Maryland, Tennessee, Indiana, Texas, Louisiana, Washington, Nevada
- Languages
- English