About Dr. Kathy Sawyer

Raised in Houston, Texas, Dr. Sawyer earned her B.S. in Mathematics from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1984 and her Pennsylvania Teaching Certification in Secondary Education (Mathematics) in 1985.

Following her undergraduate graduation, she spent 6 months in Harare, Zimbabwe teaching a local organization how to use and program their new DEC desktop computer. Returning to Houston, Texas, she worked for a computer company that had develop a hardware/software security solution for the newly emerging hard drives.

She went on to graduate work in 1987, studying first theology in Boston, then psychology in Los Angeles, and completed hospital chaplaincy training at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.

In 1995, she earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, an APA-accredited program in Pasadena, California. She also earned her M.A. in Theology from Fuller School of Theology in 1993.

For her clinical training, Dr. Sawyer completed practicums in gerontology and adult chronic mental illness, and a clerkship in assessment at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center (in-patient and out-patient assessment). She also worked part-time at a center for the chronically mentally ill in Pasadena. She went on to complete a yearlong, full-time pre-internship training experience assessing children and adolescents in Austin, Texas for learning and emotional disorders. She completed an APA-accredited internship at the Audie Murphy VA in San Antonio Texas with a strong emphasis on neuropsychology, and a post-doctoral residency assessing children and adolescents at Deer Oaks Mental Health Associates in San Antonio.

Dr. Sawyer was licensed by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists in 1996 (#25601). From 1996 through 2002, she worked for Counseling Services at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) as Staff Psychologist, Assistant Director and Director. Her duties included psychotherapy and learning disability assessment as well as the supervision of trainees at all levels engaged in such activities. In addition, she has maintained a part-time private practice since 1998.

In 2002, Dr. Sawyer left UTSA to marry, travel, and work in her private practice with an initial focus on learning disability evaluation and psychotherapy. She was awarded Fellow status with the Bexar County Psychological Association in 2009, with whom she has served as Treasurer, President-Elect, President and Past-President.

Over the years, Dr. Sawyer built a successful practice in San Antonio, focusing largely on the assessment of Twice-Exceptional (2e) students who are both Gifted & Talented as well as having a diagnosis of a learning, attentional, and/or emotional disorder. She worked frequently with students from St. Mary’s Hall, a premier private school in the area.

Beginning in 2015, her husband’s health slowly deteriorated and he was ultimately diagnosed with 3 kinds of dementia (Vascular, Lewy Body & Alzheimer’s) as well as heart and lung failure. He was finally released of this struggle in December of 2018. Dr. Sawyer, grateful for the support of the Lewy Body Caring Spouses group, helped to re-start the Life After Lewy Support Group and became a moderator as she worked through her own loss.

Following the passing of her husband, too many knee/shoulder surgeries, and the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Sawyer moved from San Antonio, Texas to Bend, Oregon to be with family and help out with the homeschooling of her youngest granddaughters. She was licensed by the Oregon Board of Psychologists in 2022 (#3553) and is building a practice based in Bend, Oregon, following a home remodel to create some comfortable work spaces.

Unable to resist learning new things, Dr. Sawyer is currently studying Biofield Tuning, Human Design, Gene Keys, Astrology, and Neurodivergence.

My Philosophy

We know our children well but there are always aspects under the hood that we can’t see, can’t see yet, or that can confuse us.

To understand your child at the deepest levels and to understand the natural energies that they bring into this world brings a way to help them to move into their true self at an earlier age. If they grow up in their true selves, they can live with authenticity throughout their lives and make more congruent choices.

Comprehensive evaluation is an excellent way to understand your child’s current functioning especially if something is troubling you and their performance is not as expected. Understanding their natural aptitudes, their memory, the level of their academic skills, their personality functioning and how they are inclined to move around in their world can give you a much better foundation for knowing the best way to help your student succeed in various learning environments.

Comprehensive testing is also an investment that will pay off in the years to come, as moving forward with good knowledge of their strengths and challenges will help you to help them to understand what will come easily and what will be more of a struggle to bring on board. By understanding their challenges early, you can help them develop coping strategies, workarounds, and other ways of being in the world that fit better and can lead to more success

Having a good understanding of one’s self is valuable insight that it will lead one to make much better choices in the years to come: of where to go to school, what to study, what jobs to investigate, who to marry, and even how to parent.

It is such a valuable investment in your student or in yourself.

It is possible to find evaluators who will do shorter and more focused evaluations, and there is a place for this; however, trimmed down evaluations can miss important aspects of a person. Many Gifted & Talented students can mask some of their difficulties with their strong intellectual aptitude and compensating strategies, until the complexity of their academic demands bring their struggles to the surface. Thorough evaluation can usually catch these issues.