About Tamela
Tamela Polanin is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) based in Illinois who offers calm, practical support for people facing stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma, and parenting challenges. She speaks plainly and focuses on what will help in day-to-day life. Tamela draws on 20 years of experience in mental health to guide conversations and problem-solving.
She centers each session on the person in front of her, listening first and shaping work around what matters most to them.
Background and approach
Tamela uses cognitive-behavioral tools to spot unhelpful thinking and emotions, and she helps clients build skills for better coping. She also uses emotion-focused and trauma approaches to help people process painful experiences and rebuild a sense of safety. Tamela has spent two decades working with many kinds of life stress and loss.
She understands the complexity of trauma and believes healing looks different for each person. Her aim is to partner with people so they feel seen and able to try new strategies between sessions. Parents often find her straightforward style useful when managing family strain, communication problems, or behavior concerns.
She also supports people dealing with grief, addictions, relationship struggles, and career transitions. Practical skill-building and steady listening are regular parts of her work. Sessions are offered in English and she accepts clients across state lines, including international clients as allowed.
Tamela’s approach is collaborative: she helps clients set goals, practice new behaviors, and track progress over time.
How Tamela’s approaches work online
Client-centered work focuses on the person’s priorities and strengths. It starts by listening closely and then shaping goals together. This approach helps people who want guidance without feeling pushed into someone else’s plan.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at thoughts and behaviors that keep problems going. Online CBT often includes short exercises, homework, and tracking changes between sessions to reduce anxiety, manage mood, and improve focus.
EMDR is a trauma-focused method that helps people process distressing memories and reduce the emotional charge they hold. In an online setting it can be paced to the client’s comfort and combined with grounding and coping skills.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Tamela will discuss options and decide together what fits the client’s goals, needs, and preferences. That collaborative planning lets therapy stay flexible as things change.
Online sessions give practical benefits: video calls mirror in-person conversation, phone sessions work when bandwidth is low, live chat can be a quick check-in, and text-based messaging supports ongoing coaching between meetings. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life while using the approaches above to build skills and process difficult experiences.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- 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
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