Tarra Judson Stariell is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) with over 28 years of clinical experience. She is a certified EMDR II therapist, a Certified Bioenergetic Therapist (CBT) and has also been trained in Somatic Experiencing (SE). In her work with individuals, she specializes in trauma, auto-immune disorders, depression, anxiety, and dissociative disorders. With couples she utilized Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), a modality with the highest effective outcomes for success. She was recently designated one of the top three Marriage, Family Therapists in Escondido.

She is a Clinical Fellow Member of the American Association for Marriage, Family Therapists (AAMFT), as well as the California Association for Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) and the International Institute for Bioenergetic Therapists (IIBA)

Tarra has extensive experience in working with these areas and believes in focusing on creating a safe environment to begin the healing process; working to empower individuals in the therapeutic process and to help people alleviate the suffering that usually accompanies such challenges.

Her work with couples focused on healing the rifts in the attachment bond between partners while also helping them to develop healthier modes of living and learning to appreciating one another. All in all, she worked to facilitate the discovery of an individual’s true potential, with all their inherent abilities, wonder and mystery.

Tarra worked within the therapeutic alliance, and whether with individuals, couples or families, her approach was multi-dimensional. She brought together her diverse training and experience to facilitate working through life’s adversities in such a way that they become a doorway to living a more fulfilled life, with increased aliveness and enjoyment of one’s own self and their significant relationships.

This included facilitating people in developing a deepened awareness of their minds and the thoughts they entertain as well as learning about their bodies with all its accompanying sensations, feelings and emotions. Regardless of the issue, from relationship discord to trauma or lifelong emotional wounds; therapy offers an opportunity to reclaim one’s full potential and harmony in life.

Tarra’s presentations have included “Attachment Issues and Bioenergetics”; “Bringing the Body into the Therapy Room”; “The Other Side of Grief” and was a keynote speaker for the 2010 Southern California Bioenergetic Conference. In February 2018, she co-presented a workshop entitled “How to Get Off the Hamster Wheel of Shame, Rage and Grandiosity.”

November of 2017, Tarra published her memoir that reads like a novel, Sanity Lost & Found, A True Story of Brainwashing and Recovery, using her life story as the backdrop to better our understanding of how childhood experiences impact us; how we become vulnerable to negative influences; how to work through the resulting dysfunctional behaviors and patterns; and what it takes to heal from the vicissitudes we all face in life. Most importantly, are the examples of the power of resiliency, compassion, and forgiveness.

Tarra believes that even the most negative of events offers potential for growth and development when we are given the opportunity to work through our emotional wounds within the safety and support of the therapeutic relationship. Through the exploration of one’s mind and the accompanying energies stored in the brain and body, healing is facilitated as the individual learns new tools and techniques that transform a negative experience into an opportunity to reclaim our full self-potential.

The energy of the Self is love, and is felt and expressed through joy, creativity, spirituality, sexuality, and a zest for life. Living a balanced life also involves emotional regulation, recognizing and expressing such emotions as grief and sadness, anger, shock, and disgust. Minding the body and clearing it of unwanted emotional energies does not mean holding them inside or acting them out by hurting another with our feelings, rather it involves awareness, truth, and acceptance—ultimately leading to forgiveness and release from the negative events and experiences.