Tanya Underwood, LMFT

Tanya Underwood is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Arizona with 16 years of clinical experience. She focuses on helping people who feel overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, addictions, and relationship or intimacy concerns. Tanya aims to create a calm, respectful space where people can take the first step toward change.

She uses straightforward methods to help people manage difficult feelings and make practical shifts. Tanya draws on cognitive behavioral techniques to identify and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. She also uses acceptance and commitment ideas to help clients clarify values and commit to steps that matter to them.

Tanya pays attention to how attachment patterns shape relationships and communication. That helps people work through abandonment, blended family challenges, and commitment or communication problems. She adapts conversations and plans to each person’s needs rather than prescribing one fixed method.

Over her career Tanya has supported people facing burnout, compassion fatigue, career stress, chronic illness, and the emotional fallout of adoption, foster care, or caregiving. She also addresses concerns like body image, eating and sleeping problems, ADHD, anger, and bipolar-related stress.

Sessions can cover concrete tools for day-to-day coping, skill-building for relationships, and longer-term work on patterns that keep causing pain. Tanya encourages a collaborative process so clients feel heard and involved in decisions about their care.

How these approaches translate to online work

Tanya uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people spot unhelpful thoughts and change behaviors that cause distress. CBT sessions often include simple exercises and homework that are easy to do between meetings. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy focuses on clarifying what matters most to a person and taking committed steps toward those values, which can be practiced in short, concrete actions.

Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the process. Tanya will work together with each person to decide whether CBT, ACT, or attachment-focused ideas fit best for their goals. She adapts the plan over time based on progress, preferences, and what feels most useful.

Online therapy offers several practical benefits for this work. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and screen-sharing for worksheets. Phone sessions can be a good option when bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to be on camera. Live chat and text-based messaging suit brief check-ins, tool coaching, or daily tracking of skills between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy schedule and keep momentum between meetings.