Ready for a reset?

Meet Savannah Hipes, LCSW

Sleep and Anxiety Specialist in Orlando & online across FL, NY & NJ

Are you tired of being tired?

Tired of overthinking?

Tired of berating yourself with criticisms?

Tired of your body calling the shots instead of you?

You feel like you’re constantly on the run from your emotions and fatigue, avoiding so many situations that nowhere feels comfortable anymore.

I can help you feel like yourself again.

I work with highly driven, sleep deprived professionals who feel exhausted, on edge, and ready to do ANYTHING to feel better. 

You’re a “fixer”. You’ve got a high drive for achievement, and even higher expectations for yourself. 

You like to feel in control. This serves you well in a lot of ways! It helps you prepare for any situation, it helps you get things done, and it makes you feel safe.

Unfortunately, it also sabotages you. It keeps you from doing things you care about because giving up control feels risky.

As someone who struggles with …

  • It feels risky to get in bed knowing how miserable you’ll be after three hours of staring at the ceiling. It feels risky to get out of bed when the alarm goes off at 6:30AM when you only fell asleep at 2AM. It feels risky to go to work tired and potentially underperform.

  • It feels risky to strike up conversation with a stranger who might reject you and confirm that you truly are unlovable. It feels risky to NOT berate yourself when you make a mistake. It feels risky to accept yourself as you are

  • It feels risky to admit to the pain and fear you feel. It feels risky to let your mind go to that dark deep space underneath the layers of avoidance where your worst memories and worst dreams live.

I’m here to help you take the risk.

I wouldn’t ask you to risk it if I didn’t know it could work. I wouldn’t ask you to risk it if I didn’t have decades of information showing me that it has worked. Your wellbeing is too important for me to risk without substantial evidence that it will be worth it.

I’m like you.

I have high expectations for my work.

In our work together, I’ll teach you techniques for change that are specific to you and your symptoms. I’m highly data-driven and evidence-based, meaning I like to use methods that work and I like to track our progress closely so we can make alterations along the way based on what is or isn’t working for you.

Sessions with me feel comforting, collaborative, creative, and challenging.

While our work will be very focused on specific strategies, we’ll also zoom out to dream about the kind of life you want to live and the kind of person you want to be. This will guide us in taking specific daily steps toward that version of you. 

I believe all of you is important, and plays a role in your rest.

You’ve seen other providers, but they tend to be one-trick ponies. They can treat your sleep apnea, but just want to give you a pill for the sleep anxiety. They can help with anxiety, but don’t know where to begin when it comes to sleep. They can work with you on trauma, but are a little out of their depth with the nightmares.

Together, we can look at the whole picture of your experience and not undermine any piece of it.

I don’t want to be one of your many stops along the way to a solution. I want to walk the whole path with you and see your journey through to the destination: a calm and confident life.

I’m the sleep specialist who will spend an hour on the phone with your prescriber explaining a sleep concept or developing a plan to help you off your sleep med. I’m the therapist who will help you get all your providers in the same room to look at your case as a whole. I’ll connect with all the relevant players to make sure we’re not mis-communicating, misdiagnosing, or just plain missing the mark when it comes to your care.

I often hear from clients, 

“I thought I was coming to improve my sleep, but turns out I was coming to change my life.”

This is my favorite part of our work, that it’s not just one thing.

It’s everything connecting and working together that makes transformation.

Specialties

  • Retrain your body and brain to sleep well using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. Tailor treatment interventions to YOUR sleep patterns using your nightly sleep data.

  • Approach fear in a new way with support and encouragement step by step using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety. Finally do things you never thought you could!

  • Develop confidence and mastery over disturbing dreams. Directly target specific nightmares and teach your body to induce calm with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Nightmares.

  • Find the pieces of you that were most impacted by life’s pain, and understand them in a new way using Cognitive Processing Therapy. Think differently, act mindfully, and create balance.

Ready to feel refreshed?

 Personal Values That Make Me Different

Connection and Fun:

My ability to connect with you, see and know you deeply as a person with unique biology and unique experiences makes me able to tailor our work to your specific needs. Feeling seen and connected also means we can have a good time together throughout the process, even when the changes we’re working on are hard.

Assertiveness:

I’m known by friends and family to say exactly what I mean in a fairly forward way, and I hate sugar-coating. This means our work can move faster because we’re not tip-toeing, and I can call it out when something important is going unnoticed. Treatment with me is direct and active. Whether we’re using your sleep data to adjust your bedtime and waketime, or practicing verbally disagreeing with a coworker, you’ll be really clear on our goals, strategy, and why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Responsibility:

I hold myself to a high degree of professional responsibility. This means that I care about only using methods I know are proven to be effective, and constantly seeking ways to improve my work through research, study, supervision, and ongoing training. If something isn’t working for you, rest assured I’ll be up at night strategizing until we find success. 

Collaboration and Curiosity:

I’m fascinated by the brain, mind, and body, and consider my work at its core to be a collection of collaborative experiments you and I use to learn what works and what doesn’t work for your unique physiology. It’s important to me that we’re equal partners in our work, and that your word holds as much value as mine. I’m not going to give my opinion or present my perspective as “right”, but help us discover together what is right for you. I’ll give you as much information, scientific background, and techniques as possible that could work for you, and I’ll explain why I think certain things will work. However, I truly believe that you are the expert on you. My job is to help you develop that expertise so you can trust and rely on your own wisdom.

My Approach

I use a Cognitive Behavioral approach to therapy. 

Cognitive means mental processes like thinking. The word cognitive refers to everything that goes on in your mind including dreams, memories, images, thoughts, and attention.

Behavior refers to everything that you do. This includes what you say, how you try to solve problems, how you act, and avoidance. Behavior refers to both action and inaction; for example, biting your tongue instead of speaking your mind is still a behavior, even though you are trying not to do something.

Using CBT means that together we will learn how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all impact each other, and how they are working (or not working) for you right now. Then we’ll practice new ways of thinking, responding to physical sensations, and taking action.

Professional Background

  • Masters of Social Work, Florida State University

  • Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Florida and New York

  • Post-Graduate Interprofessional Fellow with the Gulf Coast Veterans Health Care System

  • Trained in CBT for Insomnia, CBT for Nightmares, Cognitive Processing Therapy for Trauma, CBT for ARFID, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, The Unified Protocol for the Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders

  • Public Speaking on Sleep and Eating Disorders, Sleep and Aging, Sleep and Anxiety, Insomnia in the Tech Industry, Sleep and Nightmares

I’m excited to partner with you!