Tara Ashley
Practical, collaborative therapy for real-life struggles
LICSW, LCSW Montana
- Experience
- 16 years in practice
- Focus areas
- Stress, Anxiety, Relationship, Trauma and abuse
- Approaches
- Gottman Method, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Languages
- English
About Tara
Tara Ashley is a licensed social worker with 16 years of clinical experience in Montana. She works with people facing stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and the everyday challenges that make life feel overwhelming.
Background and approach
Tara focuses on practical steps clients can use right away to feel steadier and more able to cope. Her work often centers on relationship concerns, intimacy struggles, and the strain that comes with parenting and caregiving.
She also helps people handle major life transitions like divorce or job changes. Trauma, post-traumatic stress, and compassion fatigue are other areas she addresses in sessions.
Tara blends several approaches to match the needs of each person. She uses Gottman Method ideas for relationship patterns, cognitive behavioral strategies to shift unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, and acceptance and commitment work to clarify values and build committed action.
Her style is collaborative and down-to-earth, so sessions focus on what is useful and doable for the client. People meet her for help with sleep problems, anger, low self-esteem, and career questions as well as more complex diagnoses such as bipolar disorder.
She also supports women through pregnancy, childbirth, and related life stages. Tara aims to make therapy a calm, practical place to work through problems and try new ways of coping.
Her sessions are conversational and goal-oriented. She listens first, then offers tools, options, and a plan clients can try between sessions.
The goal is steady progress rather than quick fixes.
Therapeutic approaches suited to online care
Gottman Method ideas focus on how people interact in relationships. Online sessions can review communication patterns, teach skills for managing fights, and practice new ways of relating. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people notice difficult thoughts and choose actions that match their values. It is useful for stress, anxiety, and making purposeful life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and behavior and offers practical strategies to change unhelpful patterns, which can help with depression, sleep problems, and anxiety.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Tara will discuss goals and preferences and together decide what methods to try first. That collaborative process helps tailor sessions to a client's needs and lets techniques be adjusted as progress unfolds.
Online therapy offers flexibility and makes it easier to fit brief or regular sessions into a busy life. Video calls allow face-to-face interaction for skill practice, phone sessions can be used when bandwidth is limited, live chat is helpful for short check-ins, and text-based messaging supports ongoing struggles between appointments. These options help people stay consistent with therapy even when schedules are tight.
Frequently asked questions
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Areas of expertise
Primary focus
Also works with
Additional focus areas
Therapeutic approaches
Experience
16+ years
Licensed in
Minnesota, Montana
Languages
English