About Tamara
Tamara Spears, LMSW, helps people manage stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD, and relationship or family concerns. She brings 25 years of experience in social services and clinical settings. Her manner is warm and respectful, and she aims to make sessions practical and straightforward.
Tamara keeps sessions interactive and focused on what matters to each person. She listens first, then builds a plan that fits daily life. That plan can include skills to handle intense feelings, ways to change unhelpful thinking, and small steps toward clearer routines and goals.
Background and approach
Her background includes inpatient and outpatient social services work. Over the years she has worked with people facing trauma, emotional abuse, anger, parenting stress, career challenges, and co-occurring concerns such as addictions or mood disorders. That variety helps her draw on a wide range of tools when clients need them.
Tamara draws from several evidence-informed approaches, including cognitive behavioral strategies, acceptance and commitment ideas, attachment-informed work, and dialectical skills. She also practices a client-centered style that keeps the person’s priorities in front. In therapy she aims to reduce shame and stigma while increasing practical coping, stronger communication, and clearer decision-making.
Sessions are collaborative and paced to what feels manageable. Tamara encourages steady progress and helps people apply changes between sessions. If someone wants guidance with impulsivity, grief, sleeping or eating concerns, or finding life purpose, she focuses on concrete steps and coping tools.
Her work often blends short-term problem solving with deeper attention to patterns that keep people stuck.
Therapeutic approaches and how they work online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, then choose actions that match their values. It can be useful for anxiety, depression, and for people who struggle with motivation or chronic stress.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and changing behaviors that keep problems going. It often includes practical exercises such as thought records, behavioral experiments, and new routine-building to address sleeping, eating, or mood challenges.
Tamara treats finding the right way of working as a team effort. She will talk with clients about goals, try approaches that fit their day-to-day life, and adjust plans based on what helps. This collaborative process makes it easier to test skills and pick methods that feel realistic.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for deeper conversations and teaching skills that use visual cues. Phone sessions can fit a lunch break or require less bandwidth. Live chat and messaging work well for quick check-ins, tracking progress, or practicing short skills between visits. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent and adapt sessions to changing schedules.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Self esteem
- Career difficulties
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- Michigan
- Languages
- English
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