Tamela Polanin
Experienced trauma-informed counselor
- Credentials
- LCPC
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed in
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Tamela
Tamela Polanin is a licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC) based in Illinois. She brings 20 years of experience and an easy, straightforward way of talking about hard things. Parents and caregivers who are worried about stress, parenting struggles, or changes at home often find her calm manner helpful.
Tamela writes plainly and listens closely to understand what matters most to each person. Her practice focuses on trauma and related concerns like anxiety, depression, grief, and addictions.
Background and approach
She combines client-centered care with evidence-based tools to help people process painful memories and manage intense emotions. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is among the trauma approaches she uses. Tamela blends cognitive behavioral strategies to identify unhelpful thoughts and dialectical behavior therapy skills to support emotional regulation.
Emotionally-Focused Therapy concepts shape work on attachment, intimacy, and communication. Sessions aim to teach practical skills that people can use between meetings. She has personal experience with trauma and draws on that perspective when supporting others.
Parents may appreciate her direct but compassionate style when navigating parenting questions or blended family issues. Tamela wants to help people feel more steady, purposeful, and able to handle daily demands. Outside work she lives in the country, raises registered pygmy goats, and is a mother and stepmother.
That everyday life informs how she thinks about balance, boundaries, and real-world coping. Her goal is to walk beside clients as they make meaningful changes.
Approaches for trauma and everyday coping online
Client-centered therapy focuses on the person’s goals and perspective, with the therapist offering empathy and guidance while the client leads the work. It helps people feel heard and make choices that fit their life.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts shape emotions and behavior and teaches concrete skills to change unhelpful patterns. It is useful for anxiety, depression, parenting stress, and coping with life changes.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, EMDR, is a trauma-focused method that helps people process painful memories and reduce their emotional intensity. It is often used when traumatic events continue to cause strong reactions in daily life.
Finding the right approach is part of the therapeutic process. The therapist will work collaboratively to decide which methods best match a person’s needs, goals, and comfort level. That plan can change over time as progress is made.
Online sessions offer flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. These options make it easier to fit therapy around parenting, work, and other commitments. Remote formats also allow follow-up between sessions and steady contact while people practice skills in their everyday environments.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Concrete skills for riding out strong emotion, tolerating distress, and handling relationships without things escalating. The skills are practised in daily life, so between-session support by message or phone fits naturally.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Tamela
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point