Tara Hartley
Calm, practical support for life and relationships
- Credentials
- LCSW
- Experience
- 9 years
- Licensed in
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Tara
Tara Hartley is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who uses a warm, interactive style to help people manage stress, anxiety, and relationship concerns. She brings nine years of clinical experience, including work in substance use counseling and trauma-informed care. Tara focuses on practical skills and steady support so people can take small steps toward change.
She tailors conversations to each person's needs and avoids stigmatizing labels. Tara draws from approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy to address mood, coping, and patterns that cause distress.
Background and approach
Sessions aim to be respectful and straightforward, with clear tools to practice between meetings. Tara has training in trauma-focused work and has supported people who have experienced physical trauma or emotional abuse. She also offers help with grief, parenting questions, intimacy-related issues, and challenges tied to addiction or compassion fatigue.
Her background includes work across a broad range of mental health concerns. In sessions she mixes practical strategies with attention to meaning and values. That can look like learning new thinking habits, practicing mindfulness, or building emotion regulation skills.
The plan is adjusted over time based on what is working. Tara is licensed in Illinois as an LCSW and holds experience helping people through life changes, major losses, and relationship transitions. She aims to create a collaborative space where clients can set goals and practice changes that fit their lives.
How Tara blends methods for effective online care
Tara frequently uses cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on identifying unhelpful thinking patterns and testing new ways of thinking and behaving to reduce symptoms like anxiety or low mood. CBT often includes concrete exercises and homework to practice between sessions.She also draws on dialectical behavior therapy, a skills-based approach that teaches emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. DBT techniques can be useful for managing overwhelming emotions and improving communication in relationships.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. Tara works with each person to match methods to their goals, preferences, and the challenges they bring. She adjusts the plan over time so methods stay relevant and useful.
Online sessions offer flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy schedule and to continue progress when in-person meetings are difficult. Licensed professionals can use this range of formats to combine check-ins, skill practice, and longer sessions in a way that matches each person’s life and pace.
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
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 9 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Tara
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point