Sarah Koestner
Certified Professional Coach
I'm a coach who helps highly sensitive people navigate life transitions with less anxiety and more ease.
Sarah’s guidance and support are always compassionate, open-minded, warm, and insightful. She skillfully holds space for me to process whatever is coming up, and shines a light on my own strength and sense of knowing, even in tough moments when I can’t access that solidness inside.
The greatest gift is that Sarah has taught me tangible, empowering tools to move forward despite some significant personal challenges I’ve encountered in the last few years. This has made it possible for me to show up fully for my relationships, my community, and the people who don’t have the privilege and access that I do in order to be well.
To anyone struggling with broken self-trust, feelings of overwhelm about individual circumstances or the state of the world, relationship anxiety, intrusive thoughts: Sarah will know how to support you through whatever is coming up, and I hope you get the chance to work with her. Investing in sessions with Sarah is one of the best things I’ve ever done to care for myself.
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~ Lauren R.
From my own journey through relationship anxiety, self-doubt, and periods of feeling stuck, I know what it feels like to believe that you’re somehow broken.
But I’ve learned that our culture conditions us with this belief – that if you’re a highly sensitive person, there’s something inherently wrong with you.
Maybe well-meaning adults told you to “stop being so sensitive” or “grow a thicker skin” when you were little.
Perhaps your big feelings were met with shaming and blaming, rather than care and connection.
Sadly, highly sensitive people like you and me end up internalizing the message that our sensitivity is a “problem.”
I’m here to tell you that there is nothing wrong with you if you…
…struggle with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty during life’s transitions like moving, graduation, pregnancy, engagement and marriage, or career
changes.
…worry about making the “right” choices and find yourself asking everyone else’s opinion to find your way forward.
…feel like you can’t trust yourself and don’t know what you really want.
What if instead, I told you that your high sensitivity is a gift that gives you your huge capacity for compassion, curiosity, and creativity?
That in fact, you can access a deep pool of wisdom and healing potential beneath the overwhelming feelings in the liminal spaces of life’s transitions?
As your coach, I partner with you to dive through the feelings of fear, anxiety, and resistance and access your intuition and creativity. (I promise, you have them!)
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Transformational Coaching
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I’ve been exactly where you are. Through many periods of transition, I would worry whether I was making the “right” choices. I often felt anxious and stuck in analysis mode, as if I couldn’t trust myself.
From the relationship anxiety that spiked when my wonderful now-husband and I got engaged to the scary, new directions I’ve taken in my career, I’ve learned how to get fear out of the driver’s seat and put my wisdom and intuition in charge.
It wasn’t easy, though. I spent many years struggling with anxiety in shameful silence before I learned that there wasn’t anything wrong with me – I was actually a highly sensitive person!
But like you, I grew up in a family and a culture where my sensitivity wasn't valued. I was mercilessly teased from third to eighth grade, and would often pretend to be sick to get out of going to school.
My refuge was the theatre, where my creative pursuits were first ignited. I started taking acting classes in fourth grade, and I felt like I was home. I loved the community and escapism that acting provided from my difficult home and school life.
I ended up getting both my BFA and MFA in Acting and pursued a career as an actor for a while. Although I ultimately realized that making acting my career wasn’t a loving choice for me – too much rejection for this tender heart! – creativity is still central to my daily life. I love that healing from my anxiety has opened up space for passions like painting, writing poetry, and gradually rewilding my lawn through native gardening.
Before I started the sessions I just felt lost and was filled with anxiety. Throughout the sessions I have found many golden nuggets to implement in my life and I feel happier and lighter. Even now, when I come across an issue or when I’m not feeling the best I can find my way back rather than sit and mope. And this wouldn’t have been possible without Sarah. She is intuitive, incredible and wonderful. Thank you from the bottom of my heart Sarah.
~Ria P.​
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With support, I’ve learned lots of tools and daily practices for tending to my feelings, no matter what’s happening. By making creative pursuits central to my life each day and tending to my inner landscape, I’ve learned how to honor my sensitivity, rather than deny or shame myself for it. I’ve learned how to trust myself and reparent the parts of me that needed healing.
I love coaching highly sensitive people of all genders because so much is possible for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities when we get the individual support to navigate life transitions with less anxiety and more ease, working with our inherent nature, rather than against it.
Our energy and talents are freed up for us to channel into our creativity, relationships, and change-making – not to mention, we also feel a whole lot better when we do the daily practices for tending to our inner worlds!
Working with Sarah has been a truly amazing and heartwarming experience. She adapted each coaching session to my personal needs in a motivating way. I always felt held and supported by her from the very beginning, knowing that I could and still can reach out to her any time. During the time of our coaching so many aspects in my life have improved. I gained confidence as an actress on stage and as a woman in my everyday’s life. The relationship to myself and my voice have gotten deeper and I found more space within myself for my playful and joyful nature. I am more open and grounded at the same time today and I can trust myself way more then when we started. Thank you so much for everything, Sarah!!
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~ Elena G.
I earned my Coaching for Transformation certification, advanced Internal Family Systems training, and advanced trauma-sensitive coaching training through Leadership that Works. I have more than 1,500 coaching hours under my belt, and I have co-moderated many online courses about relationship anxiety, self-trust, and related topics for my mentor, Sheryl Paul.
I find it helpful for clients to know up front that I’m in a committed practice of living my values around environmental justice, anti-racism, equity, and inclusion. This includes confronting and undoing the conditioning from capitalism and other systems that aren’t set up to support life and creativity. I’m also intentional about working with people of all genders, and not just cisgender women.
Outside of coaching and my personal creative pursuits, I teach voice and speech as an adjunct professor for Montclair State University’s BFA Acting Program. My husband, Brian, is a fellow creative, and we stay busy raising our sweet son, Sam, in Montclair, New Jersey.
Sarah is a compassionate, intuitive, intelligent, attentive, and trustworthy mentor in wholehearted living. She effortlessly creates a safe space where the most vulnerable thoughts and feelings can be shared and met with understanding. She helped me turn my darkest fears and anxieties into useful tools through discussion, visualization techniques, and suggested daily practices. After each session, I was able to take away a new skill or mindset that catapulted me further toward health and happiness. I would recommend her coaching to anyone and everyone. It is truly life changing. I wish everyone had their own 'Sarah.'
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~ Linda F.​
Contact Me
Please feel free to contact me if you'd like to set up a complimentary discovery session to see if we'd be a good fit to work together.
Email: sarah.koestner@gmail.com
Instagram: @sarahkoestnercoach