Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC
Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC, is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, cofounder and Executive Director of Ida Lillie Psychotherapy and Wellness, clinical supervisor, consultant, and professional trainer. Her work centers on mood and anxiety disorders, eating-disorder treatment, couples therapy, culturally responsive care, and decolonized approaches to psychotherapy. She works with adolescents, adults, and couples while also supporting clinicians and organizations through consultation, supervision, and training.
Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC, approaches therapy as a collaborative process that helps clients understand how they arrived at their current patterns and what meaningful change could look like. Her public professional materials emphasize liberation, joy, relational safety, and individualized treatment rather than a one-size-fits-all clinical formula. She also teaches clinicians to examine how culture, identity, power, bias, and systemic inequities may shape the therapeutic relationship and treatment experience.
Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC, is especially known for bringing a decolonized lens to eating-disorder treatment. Her work challenges narrow assumptions about who develops eating disorders, what recovery should look like, and how race, culture, body ideals, access to care, and social context can influence assessment and treatment. This perspective complements evidence-informed care rather than replacing the need for medical, nutritional, psychiatric, or specialized eating-disorder services when indicated.
Professional Background
Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC, earned a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and a bachelor’s degree in Human Development Psychology from DePaul University. Her current Ida Lillie profile identifies her as cofounder and Executive Director of the practice and as a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. She also provides case consultation, diagnostic support, supervision, and professional training for clinicians and group practices.
Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC, is verified by Psychology Today as an Illinois Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor under license number 180011308. Her current professional profiles identify mood disorders, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, couples therapy, life transitions, relationship concerns, trauma, and related emotional and behavioral difficulties among the areas she treats. Her practice draws from multiple approaches, including cognitive-behavioral, relational, psychodynamic, strengths-based, multicultural, trauma-focused, and couples-oriented methods according to clinical need.
Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC, also supervises developing clinicians and supports professional growth through consultation and organizational training. Current Ida Lillie materials show that she supervises counselors within the practice and offers case and diagnostic consultation for individual clinicians and group practices. Her professional-development work emphasizes self-reflection, cultural responsiveness, clinical skill building, and awareness of systemic influences on treatment.
In addition to direct clinical work, she facilitates workshops for behavioral health professionals and organizations. Clinical Events currently identifies her as a presenter for programming focused on therapeutic rapport and implicit bias, reflecting her broader educational emphasis on trust, engagement, cultural awareness, and inequity in clinical practice.
Areas of Expertise
Eating Disorders and Decolonized Care. Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC, specializes in eating-disorder diagnosis, intervention, and treatment through a decolonized lens. This approach asks clinicians to examine the influence of diet culture, racism, body ideals, socioeconomic conditions, gender expectations, and healthcare access while still attending carefully to medical risk and established standards of care. The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health emphasizes that eating disorders can affect people of all ages, racial and ethnic backgrounds, body weights, and sexes and may be medically serious. Clinical Events’ article on healing shame in the therapy room offers related context for clinicians working with shame, body image, and self-criticism.
Mood and Anxiety Disorders. Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC, works with clients experiencing anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion, self-criticism, and recurring patterns that interfere with daily life. Her approach combines symptom-focused interventions with attention to relationships, identity, meaning, and the contexts in which distress develops. Treatment may draw from CBT, DBT-informed strategies, psychodynamic work, relational therapy, strengths-based approaches, or other methods based on the client’s needs and goals.
Couples and Relational Therapy. Her work with couples focuses on communication, intimacy, connection, changing roles, conflict, and recurring relationship patterns. She helps clients explore not only what is happening between partners but also how family history, emotional learning, culture, expectations, and current stressors may influence the relationship. Couples work should remain collaborative and appropriately screened for coercion, violence, or other conditions that may make conjoint treatment unsafe.
Therapeutic Rapport and Engagement. Sara Vivens, MA, LCPC, emphasizes the therapeutic relationship as an important foundation for effective treatment. Trust, attunement, validation, transparency, cultural awareness, and the ability to repair misunderstandings can influence whether clients feel safe enough to participate honestly in therapy. Clinicians can explore these principles further through Clinical Events’ Rapport Building: Laying the Foundation for Effective Treatment Through Relational Care and Building Therapeutic Rapport: Foundations of Trust and Engagement.
Culturally Responsive and Anti-Bias Practice. Vivens helps clinicians examine how assumptions, implicit bias, racism, privilege, marginalization, and systemic inequities may affect assessment, diagnosis, rapport, treatment planning, and professional decision-making. This work does not ask clinicians to abandon diagnostic rigor; it asks them to recognize that clinical judgment can be shaped by the social and cultural environment in which both therapist and client operate. The American Psychological Association emphasizes culturally responsive mental health services and attention to systemic barriers and bias in psychological care.
Clinical Supervision and Consultation. Her professional work includes supervision, case consultation, diagnostic support, and clinician development. Effective supervision requires a balance of support and accountability, giving clinicians room to examine uncertainty, countertransference, cultural assumptions, treatment planning, competence, and ethical responsibilities while maintaining client welfare as the central concern. Ida Lillie’s current team pages identify multiple clinicians working under her supervision.
Organizational Training and Professional Education. Vivens also works with organizations seeking to strengthen clinical awareness, inclusion, communication, and professional practice. Her training is particularly relevant to teams examining implicit bias, systemic inequities, therapeutic engagement, eating-disorder treatment, and the ways organizational culture may influence care.
Richla Davis, M.Ed, LCPC