Specializing in anxiety, depression, trauma, and the deeply personal shifts of perimenopause and postmenopause—because I've done my own work, and I know what it takes.
Tara Arhakos - Licensed Professional Counselor in Monmouth County, NJ
A lover of cappuccinos, punk rock, and counseling!
That's me. I've been to more Dropkick Murphys concerts than I can count since the age of 15, and I'm fairly certain espresso runs through my veins. If I could set up a counseling practice in a European café on a cobblestone street, I absolutely would.
When I'm not in session, I'm traveling to foreign countries and soaking up local life whenever I can. Back home in New Jersey, I'm with friends and family, or catching rays on the beach. But this life—the one that feels balanced and full and genuinely mine—didn't arrive easily. It was built through years of my own healing journey, through loss, through trauma, and through learning what it actually means to come back to yourself.
Where this all began
I've been relying on coping skills since I was six years old, after the death of a family member that can only be described as horrific. By first grade I was carrying severe anxiety in my small body—showing up as stomachaches that sent me to the school nurse again and again. It was a school psychologist, along with a remarkable amount of support, who first helped me quiet the racing thoughts in my tiny head.
From worry stones tucked in my pocket to photographs of the people I'd loved and lost on my desk—I found my own language for coping. The body found its ways to hold what the mind couldn't yet name. So it came as no surprise to anyone, least of all me, that I eventually became a mental health professional.
"I've walked this road myself. I know what it feels like to carry anxiety in your body before you even have words for it."
How my practice evolved
I entered the mental health field in my mid-twenties grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy—learning to identify the thought patterns that keep us stuck and reshape them into something more workable. In my early thirties, I found my way into mindfulness, distress tolerance, and somatic self-soothing, drawn to how much the body holds and how rarely we're taught to listen to it.
By my mid-to-late thirties I had traveled into energy and body-centered healing, and in the fall of 2020 I deepened that work further—becoming a Yoga Alliance Certified RYT 200 and continuing to develop my practice around somatic and body-based approaches to trauma healing.
That evolution wasn't accidental. It mirrored my own healing. Each modality I discovered, I discovered because I needed it. And that's what I bring into the room with every client.
Who I work with
I work primarily with women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who are navigating anxiety, depression, and unresolved trauma—often compounded by the profound hormonal and identity shifts of perimenopause and postmenopause. Many of my clients are high-functioning women who have spent years holding everything together for everyone else and are finally, carefully, making space for themselves.
If your anxiety has intensified in ways that feel unfamiliar, if your body feels like unfamiliar territory, if you're grieving a version of yourself while trying to figure out who comes next—you're in the right place.
- Women navigating anxiety and depression, especially when perimenopause or postmenopause has made it harder
- Women carrying trauma—old or recent—that talk therapy alone hasn't fully reached
- Women in midlife who are ready to stop managing and start actually healing
- Women who want a therapist who has genuinely been in it herself
My hope is to create a space that finally feels like yours—where you can set down what you've been carrying and be honest about how you're really doing. A place where your healing gets the same energy you've been giving everyone else for years.
Want to learn more about my credentials click below.