About Tara
Tara Whitecotton is a licensed clinical social worker who helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and major life changes. She meets people where they are and focuses on practical steps they can use day to day. Her sessions are collaborative and straightforward.
She listens first, then helps clients identify small, manageable goals. Communication skills, coping strategies, and building resilience are common themes in her work. With three years of experience as an LCSW in Illinois, she draws on several evidence-informed methods.
Background and approach
Tara uses techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy to help people shift unhelpful thinking and clarify values. She also brings client-centered and mindfulness-based ideas into sessions to support emotional awareness. She commonly helps people with relationship strain, parenting stresses, career concerns, body image and eating issues, and trauma or abuse recovery.
Additional focus areas include adoption and foster care histories, attachment concerns, chronic illness or pain, and challenges tied to aging and caregiver stress. Tara offers a warm, direct style aimed at building skills that fit everyday life. She encourages practical experiments between sessions and uses coaching-style questions to help people track progress.
The goal is clearer choices and better coping, not quick fixes.
Therapies That Fit into Your Life
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people clarify what matters most and take small steps toward those values while learning to accept difficult thoughts or feelings. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on identifying unhelpful thinking patterns and testing practical changes to behavior and routine. Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes a respectful, nonjudgmental relationship where the client’s perspective guides the work and the therapist reflects and supports exploration.Choosing the right approach is a team effort. Tara will listen to your goals and try different ways of working until you find what feels useful. She often blends elements from these approaches to match each person’s needs and preferences rather than sticking to a single method.
Online formats make fitting therapy into a busy life easier. Video calls provide face-to-face interaction for deeper conversation, phone sessions can work when bandwidth is limited, live chat can be used for quick check-ins, and text-based messaging is useful for brief reflections or ongoing support between sessions. These options let people schedule work around jobs, childcare, or travel while keeping continuity of care with a licensed professional.
Questions people ask
What kinds of concerns does Tara help with?
What is her therapy style like?
What background and experience does she bring?
Where is Tara licensed and practicing?
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How are fees handled and how do I begin?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Grief
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 3 years
- Licensed
- Illinois
- Languages
- English
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