Anita Tanner, LMSW

Anita Tanner, LMSW, helps people facing stress, anxiety, grief, depression, and major life changes. She focuses on practical steps that reduce overwhelm and help people feel more in control. Her approach aims to make daily life more manageable and meaningful.

With 40 years of experience, Anita draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and client-centered methods. Sessions often include clear, doable strategies for handling difficult thoughts and strong emotions. Mindfulness and motivational interviewing are sometimes woven in to support ongoing progress.

In the room she emphasizes listening first, then creating simple goals together. Anita uses short exercises, thought records, and behavior experiments that people can try between sessions. She also pays attention to how grief, care responsibilities, chronic illness, and aging affect mood and routines.

People come with concerns like caregiver stress, chronic pain or illness, intimacy issues, anger, and feelings of emptiness or loss. Anita helps with practical planning around hospice, end-of-life matters, and the strain of caregiving when those topics arise. She also addresses commitment worries, control issues, guilt, and forgiveness.

Her work is collaborative and paced to each person’s needs. Anita speaks English and provides services to people in Michigan and internationally through online formats. She welcomes questions about how therapy might fit into someone’s life and priorities.

Therapeutic approaches and online options

Anita commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people spot unhelpful thoughts and try new behaviors. CBT focuses on changing patterns in thinking and action to reduce anxiety, depression, and mood swings. She also uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help people notice difficult feelings without getting stuck and to clarify what matters most in life.

Her sessions are collaborative. She will work with each person to choose which approach or combination fits best based on goals, day-to-day challenges, and personal preferences. The first sessions typically include setting small, concrete goals and deciding which methods to try together.

Online therapy offers flexibility in how people connect. Video calls allow face-to-face work and exercises, phone sessions can be simpler when bandwidth is limited, live chat suits brief check-ins, and text-based messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and changing routines.