FAQs
Virtual Therapy in Michigan and Florida

Liberated Therapy is an out-of-network provider with all insurance companies. As a private-pay practice, I intentionally keep a small caseload so I can provide each client with focused and individualized care. 

Insurance-based therapy usually comes with requirements around diagnosis, the number and frequency of sessions, and documentation, and it can mean sharing personal information with your insurer. Paying privately allows for the discretion you deserve and lets our work follow your needs and goals rather than the insurance company’s requirements.

Many clients still get part of their costs reimbursed. I can provide a monthly superbill (an itemized receipt) for you to submit to your insurance company. Superbills include a diagnosis code, so we can talk through what that means for you before you decide.

A 50-minute session is $150. Fees for extended sessions and intensives depend on the length of time we schedule. We'll talk through what fits your needs during your free consult, because session length and frequency vary depending on what you’re working on.

Liberated Therapy is based in Detroit, Michigan, and the practice is entirely virtual. I’m Sara Havlik, LMSW, licensed in Michigan and Florida, and I can work with anyone located in either state. All sessions are held online by secure telehealth video.

I work with adults. But if your child is struggling, you’re in the right place. When you feel steadier and more confident, your child feels it too. Working with parents is often the most lasting way to help a child.

A child's behavior is often a signal about what’s happening inside them and around them. What a parent brings into the parenting space, their own history, their inherited scripts, what gets activated when their child falls apart, has an enormous effect on how a family functions. Working with the parent often moves things faster than working with the child, and it does it without your child becoming the patient.

Parent therapy is therapy for you, the parent. Together we look at what you bring into parenting: your history, the patterns handed down to you, and what gets stirred up when your child falls apart. These shape how the whole family feels.

You come away steadier and more confident in the calls you make for your kid. It can help whether your child is struggling right now or you simply want to parent differently than you were parented.

ARFID stands for Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. It involves significant restriction in eating that isn’t driven by body image concerns. Instead, it often stems from sensory sensitivities, fears of choking or vomiting associated with eating.

It’s widely misunderstood, frequently misdiagnosed, and it affects the whole family, not only the person with ARFID*. Along with CBT-AR (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for ARFID), the leading evidence-based approach, I work with parents on the family patterns that develop around food. 

*I also work with adults who have ARFID.

ARFID care often involves a team approach. I can coordinate as part of a multidisciplinary team supporting you or your child, such as doctors, dietitians, occupational or feeding therapists, and schools, so everyone is working toward the same goals.

Yes. I use Exposure & Response Prevention (ERP), which is the gold-standard treatment for OCD. When the person with OCD is a child, much of the work happens with the parents, focused on reducing the accommodations families build around a child's compulsions. That’s difficult work, and it’s where most families get stuck without support.

Yes, and it’s one of my areas of deepest focus. I’m an adoptive parent, and my lens of adoption has been shaped by listening to adoptee’s own voices. Parenting a child whose story began before you is a unique kind of parenting. Everyday challenges can carry layers of grief, attachment, and identity that the usual parenting advice doesn’t speak to. Together, we’ll make room for it all.

I work with families formed through adoption, surrogacy, and donor conception.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) is a therapy that helps the brain process traumatic memories the body has held onto so they become less intense and stop driving.

IFS (Internal Family Systems) works from the understanding that every part of you developed for a reason, including the parts that are making life harder for you now.

I’m trained in both, and together we’ll choose what fits, whether that’s EMDR or IFS, or a blend of both.

An intensive is a longer block of therapy time, often several hours, scheduled over one or a few days instead of spread across weekly sessions. It suits situations where you want to make meaningful progress in a shorter time, where waiting a week between sessions interrupts the work, or where something needs concentrated attention. We build the length and structure together.

The consult is a 15-minute, free, by video or phone conversation. You share roughly what’s going on, I ask a few questions, and I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m the right fit. Nothing is required of you beforehand, and there’s no obligation to book afterward. If I’m not the right person, I’ll point you toward someone who might be.

That depends on what you’re working on, and I’ll give you a straight answer once I understand it. Some work is a focused season. Some is longer. We’ll check in along the way about how things are going, and you’re always free to decide what is next.

Yes, with your written consent. Coordinating with schools, pediatricians, occupational therapists, and other providers is a standard part of how I work, and you’ll always know what’s being shared and why. It’s one of the practical advantages of a private-pay model, since insurance doesn’t reimburse that time.