My Approach

Hi! I'm Sally Bennett, a licensed Clinical Social Worker and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner located in Austin, Texas. I take a whole person approach to healing — one that blends psychology with somatic practices, nervous system awareness, and creative exploration.

I've been working in mental health since 2000. I started with children, but quickly found myself drawn more to the parents — the ones carrying the weight of holding everything together. Most had their "stress cups" overflowing. That's when I realized what I'm truly passionate about: helping people move past the barriers that keep them stuck and reclaim a life that actually feels like theirs.

Over the years I've learned that anxiety, shame, and self-criticism aren't character flaws — they're intelligent nervous system responses. Understanding this changes everything. When people can see their struggles with compassion instead of judgment, something shifts. They breathe easier. They feel less alone. They start to trust themselves again.

I know this not just professionally — but personally.

I grew up in a family that needed a lot from me. Early on I learned to perform, to manage, to hold things together — for everyone but myself. I got very good at contorting myself around other people's needs. It's actually a brilliant nervous system response for a child — bend, adapt, disappear a little. The problem with that survival strategy is that overtime, eventually you forget what your original shape was supposed to be. By my late thirties, my body was telling me something was wrong in the only language it had left: chronic pain, exhaustion, high anxiety, as well as a quiet but persistent feeling that something was missing. I looked around at my life and realized something had to change. I had become the common denominator in my own stuck-ness.

So I made a commitment. I became single minded and I devoted myself to my own healing — somatic therapies several times a week, daily yoga, and most importantly a deliberate pause from everything that was pulling me away from myself. It wasn't dramatic. I don’t think my community necessarily saw what was happening. ( kind of like when trees grow—we’re not aware of it when they are growing, are we?) So, it was quiet, repetitive, and sometimes very uncomfortable. But slowly, something reorganized. The pain eased. My breathing deepened. I felt more at home in my own skin — and I became more creative, more curious, more alive. Less responsible for everyone else's experience. More interested in my own.

That first year changed everything. And honestly, it's why I do this work.

The tools that helped me most —cognitive therapy techniques (aka Mindset), nervous system regulation, somatic practices, and a beautiful creative process called SoulCollage® — are now at the heart of what I offer. Not because I read about them in a textbook. Because I lived my way through them.

The people I work with are some of the most resilient, self-aware, caring humans I've ever met. They just haven't always had someone reflect that back to them.

I'm genuinely curious about how people heal, which means I keep learning. My training includes Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy, EMDR, DBT, and Somatic Experiencing®. But the work that has most deeply shaped how I currently show up is my study of Polyvagal Theory — and the quiet, surprising wisdom that emerges when we stop thinking so hard and start listening to something deeper. Understanding our own nervous systems through a Polyvagal lens gives something insight alone never could: self-compassion. SoulCollage® also offers a way to access our own inner wisdom without having to think our way there. I love to give that to other people — not as a concept, but as a lived, felt experience

I believe healing happens when we care for all aspects of ourselves — mind, body, and soul. And I believe most people are far closer to that than they think. It’s an unbelievable privilege to walk beside my clients on this journey.

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