Tara Blake
REGISTERED CLINICAL COUNSELLOR | RCC
Your thoughts are not evidence.
They are not who you are.
Are you facing adversity, painful emotions, difficult relationships, a diminished sense of self, or past traumas? I believe we all have the resilience and strength to cope with life's unpredictability. With the right counselling it is possible to discover a sense of ownership and insight into yourself where profound, embodied change can occur.
I am Tara Blake, a Registered Clinical Counsellor at Eterna Counselling and Wellness in Abbotsford, BC. As a trauma-informed and relational counsellor, I listen and go at your pace, leading with acceptance, collaboration, and empowerment. I specialize in PTSD and complex trauma related to abuse or partner violence, and work with clients on grief and loss, depression, anxiety, OCD, divorce, aging, and personal development. Whatever you are carrying, whether it has a name or not, that is a real place to start.
My Approach?
The work starts with understanding, not fixing.
I begin with the question of what is actually happening, whether that is grief, overwhelm, the cycle of abuse, emotional dysregulation, OCD, or a trauma history that keeps surfacing. Understanding what has been carrying you comes before anything else.
Everything I do is relational and trauma-informed. I pay attention to more than the content of what you say. I notice what happens in your body when you say certain things, what you reach for when something feels too close. The nervous system is always part of the conversation. I also work somatically, because the body holds information the mind sometimes cannot access directly, and that information matters. I go at your pace. I do not have an agenda for where you should be by session six. I follow your readiness, while bringing enough clinical direction that we are actually moving, not just circling.
$150.00
INDIVIDUAL
RCC
# 21943
18+
AGES
Trauma
Focused Therapy
WHO I WORK WITH
Adults carrying depression, grief, anxiety, relational pain, or a general weight they cannot fully name, who are ready to stop carrying it alone and work with someone who will be honest with them.
You don't need a specific diagnosis or a crisis point to be here. You're an adult carrying something real — a grief that has settled in and won't lift, a depression that's been present long enough you've started to think of it as your personality, an anxiety that isn't dramatic but hums underneath almost everything.
Individuals (18+) who has been living with intrusive thoughts, compulsions, or behaviours and are ready to finally understand what is actually happening, not just manage the symptoms.
You do not need to be certain to reach out. You are spending enormous mental energy on thoughts you did not choose and cannot turn off, and then doing something to make the feeling go away. It works for a moment. Then it comes back. You may have been in therapy before and felt some relief, but not the kind that came from understanding what was actually happening. That understanding is where we start.
Women navigating midlife, hormonal change, shifting identity, a history of abuse or trauma, and the re-emergence of things they never had adequate support around.
You do not need to be in crisis to be here. You have been reliable. You have shown up. You have held the emotional weight of your household, your relationships, your career for so long the weight became invisible. And now something has shifted. Maybe it is perimenopause or menopause or maybe it is grief, or the slow recognition of something you survived that you are only now beginning to name.
WHAT WE'LL WORK ON TOGETHER:
Healing from abuse
& partner violence
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Understanding how the cycle of abuse works and what it does to your sense of self over time
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Working through the shame, self-doubt, and distorted thinking that abusive relationships create
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Rebuilding the capacity to trust yourself, and finding your way back to a sense of self that belongs to you
Navigating the psychological weight of midlife & menopause
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Making honest space for the emotional dimensions of hormonal change, including the anxiety, low mood, rage, and grief that rarely get named as such
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Working through the identity questions that arise when major roles shift, including the grief of the empty nest, a changed marriage, or a career that no longer fits
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Building a sense of yourself that does not depend entirely on who needs you
Processing complex
Trauma & PTSD
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Working through complex or relational trauma at a pace your nervous system can actually tolerate
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Working with PTSD symptoms directly, including hypervigilance, intrusive memories, and a body that stays on alert long after the danger has passed
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Working somatically with what the body has been holding, often for years
Grief that was never given the right amount of space
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Making space for grief that is layered, delayed, or mixed with feelings like ambivalence, relief, guilt, or anger
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Acknowledging losses that are not always named as losses: the role, the version of the relationship you thought you had, the future you imagined
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Finding what comes next, not as a resolution to the grief, but alongside it
Interrupting the OCD cycle & reclaiming your life from it
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Understanding how the obsessive-compulsive cycle works and why the things you have been doing to cope have been making it stronger
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Understanding why the content of intrusive thoughts is not evidence of character or intent, and working slowly with the shame around that
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Developing practical responses to the cycle that do not feed it, at a pace that is honest about how hard this is
Depression, anxiety, and the weight of daily life
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Understanding what is underneath the depression or anxiety, not just managing the surface
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Addressing the patterns in relationships or thinking that are sustaining the difficulty
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Developing tools that fit your actual life, your actual schedule, your actual capacity, not an idealized version of it
I will not rush you. I do not have a schedule for your progress, & I will not make you feel behind.
I will not treat your OCD as a form of general anxiety and give you tools built for something else. The distinction matters clinically, and you deserve someone who knows the difference.
I will not minimize what you are going through, or imply that you should feel more gratitude, more perspective, or more okayness than you do.
I will not hide behind clinical language to create professional distance. If I think something is important for you to understand about what is happening, I will say it in plain language.
I will not pretend the work is easy, or that there is a clear endpoint where everything will be resolved. I will also not let you sit in it alone.
My Approach?
Trauma-Informed. Relational. Somatic. Genuinely at Your Pace.
I begin with the question of what is actually happening, because you cannot work with something you do not yet understand. Before any technique or strategy, I want to know what has been carrying you, and I want you to understand it too. That understanding, when it finally lands accurately, is often where something shifts for the first time.
Everything I do is relational and trauma-informed, which means your nervous system is always part of the room. I pay attention to more than what you say. I notice how it lands in your body, what you reach for when something feels too close, where the conversation slows or closes. The patterns that bring people to therapy show up in the therapeutic relationship too. That is not a problem. It is some of the most useful information we have, and working with it honestly is part of how change happens. I also work somatically, because the body holds what the mind has not been able to fully process. You do not need any particular practice or awareness for this. It is simply a consistent attention to what is happening physically when we are in certain territory, because that is often where the most honest information lives.
And through all of it, I go at your pace. Not as a formality, but as a clinical commitment. Therapy asks people to move toward things that are difficult, and that has to happen within a window of tolerance that is real. Moving too fast produces overwhelm. Moving too slowly becomes a way of staying comfortable rather than genuinely engaging. I am paying attention to that edge, and I am following yours.
Narrative Therapy
Examining the stories you have come to hold about yourself, your history, and your situation, and creating room to question the ones that are no longer true or were never entirely yours.
Emotion-Focused Therapy
Moving toward the emotions underneath the surface rather than around them, at a pace and in a way that is honest about how difficult that can be.
Mindfulness-Based Practice:
Not as a performance of calm, but as a genuine practice of being present with what is happening inside you, including the difficult parts, without being entirely controlled by them.
Somatic Therapy
Attending to what is happening in your body, because the body often carries what words have not yet reached.
Person-Centred Therapy:
The belief that you are the expert on your own experience, and my role is to create the conditions where you can actually access that expertise rather than perform what you think I want to hear.
Trauma-Informed Therapy
The foundation of everything I do. Your history, your nervous system, and the question of what you need to feel safe enough to do this work are always part of the room.
Psychoeducation (OCD-specific):
The relationship between us is not incidental. It is part of how healing happens. Patterns that show up in your life show up here too, and working with them honestly is meaningful clinical work.
Psychoeducation (OCD-specific):
Accurate information about how OCD works is not an optional extra for this population. It is often the first thing that actually helps.
EDUCATION & TRAININGS
DEGREES & EDUCATION
Master of Counselling Psychology
City University
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology
University of the Fraser Valley
SPECIALIZED TRAININGS
Trauma Sensitive Yoga Training
First Responders Health Certification
PROFFESIONAL REGISTRATIONS
Registered Clinical Counsellor
#21943
Crime Victim Assistance Program
Emotion Focused Therapy
HOW I GOT HERE:
OUTSIDE THE OFFICE
I have always been drawn to how people heal. Long before I became a therapist I was interested in the body, in movement, in what it means to feel safe in your own physical experience. That interest led me toward trauma-sensitive yoga, and working with people in that space is what made the clinical gap impossible to ignore. I kept seeing people who needed more than a room and a mat could offer. People carrying things that had names and specific ways of being worked with, and who were not getting any of that. So I went back to school, and I brought that foundation with me.
What I became interested in was accuracy. The gap between what people were being told about their experience and what was actually happening. The person with OCD who had been through years of anxiety treatment and was no better. The person who had survived abuse and been told to focus on moving forward, without anyone helping them understand what that experience had actually done. I kept seeing that gap and I kept wanting to close it. That is still what drives my work.
I enjoy spending as much time as I can with my adult children and their families, who are a central part of my life and bring me significant meaning and joy.
I have a mischievous dog who has stolen my heart as well. When I have spare time I practise cultivating both indoor and outdoor plants, which is an ongoing and rewarding challenge.
To unwind I engage in knitting and sewing, hobbies I have pursued for many years and find genuinely creative. I continue to deepen my understanding of the human experience through ongoing learning about neuroscience and the science of how we heal.