About Tara
Tara Hartley is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) practicing in Illinois. She brings nine years of experience in behavioral health, including work as a substance use counselor and years supporting people through trauma, anxiety, and depression. Tara offers a respectful, nonjudgmental presence and a practical style in sessions.
She blends client-centered care with cognitive behavioral and dialectical behavior approaches. That mix helps people learn new coping skills, reframe unhelpful thoughts, and manage intense emotions.
Background and approach
Mindfulness and existential ideas are woven in when clients want to explore meaning, values, or purpose. Tara has supported people facing relationship strain, grief, parenting stress, and life transitions. She also has experience addressing addiction, trauma and abuse, and compassion fatigue.
Her background includes work with caregivers, those facing cancer or aging concerns, and people navigating divorce or blended family challenges. In a typical session she listens first, then works with each person to set realistic goals and practice skills between meetings. Sessions often include problem-solving, thought records, and emotion-regulation exercises tailored to the client’s everyday life.
Tara emphasizes practical steps that can be tried between sessions. She offers therapy in English and accepts clients in Illinois. The approach is collaborative - she helps people decide which tools to use and adjusts plans as needs change.
Tara frames change as gradual and rooted in small, steady efforts.
How therapeutic approaches shape online care
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening without judgment and helping people find their own solutions; it is useful for building trust and working through relationship or identity concerns. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, targets thought patterns and behaviors to reduce symptoms like anxiety and depression by teaching practical exercises and homework techniques. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, emphasizes emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills and can help when intense emotions or impulsive behaviors are getting in the way.Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and what has or has not helped in the past. That conversation guides which methods are used and the plan is reviewed and adjusted as progress is made.
Online therapy offers multiple ways to meet: video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video is useful for longer sessions and visual cues, while phone sessions can fit a shorter check-in or work better when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging make it easier to check in during the week or share brief updates and exercises without scheduling a full session. These options make it simpler to match therapy to a busy schedule and changing needs.
Questions people ask
What concerns does Tara address in sessions?
How would you describe her therapeutic style?
What background does she bring to therapy?
What are her credentials and where is she located?
Can sessions be held in languages other than English?
Which session formats does she use?
How are costs and payments handled?
How do I begin working with her?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- 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
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.