Tom Sklar-Blake, MEd, LCPC
Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor
Staff Therapist
Tom Sklar-Blake is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor who emphasizes a personalized focus on client values and goals. His approach involves building authentic relationships in a supportive, caring environment while using evidence-based behavioral techniques to help clients directly address the issues which bring them to treatment. He works with adults, young people, and families on issues including substance use, compulsive behaviors, anxiety, depression, and trauma recovery.
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Master’s of Education in Counseling from Northeastern Illinois University
Bachelor’s of Arts in English from Pomona College, CA
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Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor
Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD Certification through K Chard, 2022
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Certification through Insight Counseling, 2020
Foundational Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Training through ERC/Pathlight, 2019
Foundational Training in Eating Disorder Treatment through ERC/Pathlight, 2019
Substance Abuse/Co-Occurring Disorder Practicum, Hazelden Betty Ford, 2017-2018
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Tom is a relational and behavioral therapist who works with his clients to address their thoughts and behaviors in the present, where change occurs. He values humor and kindness in his personal relationships with his clients, and he recognizes that everyone, even on their worst day, is just trying to get their needs met.
Drawing primarily from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Processing, and Relational Therapy, he works with clients at their own speed to identify their individual strengths and values. Then he helps his clients harness their own best qualities to address the issues that get in the way of living a rich, full life.
He also has a strong background in several modalities of PTSD and Complex PTSD treatment and has worked successfully to alleviate trauma symptoms in a wide range of patients.
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Tom works with adults, young people, and families who are looking to make changes in how they are living. He has a special focus on anxiety, depression, and poor self-esteem, as well as individuals struggling with substance use and compulsive behaviors. He also works with people in long-term recovery to address the underlying issues that can still interfere with being happy, joyous, and free.
He has also worked with clients dealing with complex PTSD, eating disorders, and family crises. He has worked in multiple settings, including residential and partial hospitalization programs, sober living, and private practice. He also has multiple years of experience in career consultation.
He enjoys working with people who are open to making changes in their lives, even if they do not know what that change should be. He loves angry people and criers, because they’re honest. And he’s aware that no one is open and honest all the time.
And that’s OK.
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Outside of the office, Tom is most comfortable exploring. He’s an amateur photographer, and if something interesting or unusual is happening in Chicago, there’s a good chance Tom will show up with friends, camera in hand, more enthusiastic than talented. In another life, he’d be an anthropologist. He spends too much time geeking out over niche documentaries, popular science books, and fantasy novels.
He enjoys people and loves to talk and listen. He is happy to discuss his own story with people and is endlessly fascinated with how others see the world.