Catherine Tanis

Catherine Tanis

LCSW in New Jersey

Specializing in trauma, mind-body wellness, and family systems therapy.

I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who believes in the potential of psychotherapy to facilitate life altering change. On a very primal level, we human beings thrive on the authentic, consistent care and concern of others, and them for us.

While attending high school, I worked part-time as a nursing assistant with the elderly. I so enjoyed interacting with patients and listening to their rich narratives of how they faced life’s challenges. These experiences led me to pursue an education to become a Registered Nurse. My early career experience illuminated the patterns of mind-body connections and their effects on mood, wellness, and disease. I believed in the interconnectedness of emotional, physical, behavioral, cognitive, and developmental impacts on human life prior to the evidence provided by the neuroscience and neuropsychology fields over recent decades.

My growing awareness of people’s desires to tell their stories began to crystallize. Hearing people of all ages struggling to overcome life’s difficult and painful experiences prompted me to pursue additional coursework in Psychology. I pursued a graduate degree in Social Work from Fordham University with a clinical focus on children and their families before collaborating with survivors of domestic violence and their children. I have taken continuing education coursework in the acute and long -term effects of trauma on children and adults. I have practiced an eclectic mix of therapeutic and psycho-educational group work with adolescents and adults, utilized Ego Psychology, Trauma focused EMDR therapy, Cognitive Behavioral and Family Therapy modalities to address clients’ specific needs. I have also practiced social casework to consider the person in their overall environment to identify what additional resources are available to assist them. I highly value the Genogram family history interview and assessment as a tool to identify a family’s psychological, behavioral, and physical health patterns with a dialectical approach.

This work is more fulfilling for me than I ever imagined. The links of mind-body effects are more researched and there is more evidence than ever before of physical and psychological. Additionally, there are more tools for people to utilize on their own outside of therapy that I happily share. I am thankful and honored to be able to accompany people for a short while on their life journeys.