Dr. Tara Gralnick, Ph.D., C.Psych

Dr. Tara Gralnick is a registered clinical psychologist, Co-Founder of the Clinical Program, and Director of Clinical Training at eFIT Institute, with a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her work is grounded in the conviction that meaningful therapeutic change happens within a relationship that is safe, genuine, and deeply attuned. Her style is warm, emotionally engaged, and non-judgmental, and she aims to create a space where clients can move beneath layers of protection and distress to access the deepest emotional pain underlying their struggles and ultimately transform that pain.

Tara has received extensive, in-depth training in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), including training with pioneers of the approach, which serves as the primary foundation of her therapeutic work. Her clinical approach is deeply rooted in EFT, both in how she understands emotional suffering and in how she helps clients move through it. She works with clients to access the emotional roots of their struggles, particularly pain shaped by earlier relational wounds, and to work to transform the deeply held emotional patterns that continue to shape their present lives. While EFT is her central therapeutic orientation, Tara also draws selectively on her training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) when these approaches are useful for reducing acute or situational distress, building stability, or supporting clients in moving toward more emotionally focused work.

Tara is also passionate about supervising clinicians in Emotion-Focused Therapy and helping to disseminate the approach more broadly. At eFIT, she provides supervision to clinicians on the psychology team, supporting them as they learn, apply, and deepen their practice of EFT. Her supervision style is warm, attuned, and collaborative. She meets clinicians at their level of familiarity with the approach while helping them build greater confidence and depth in their use of it. She places particular emphasis on careful case conceptualization, identifying and accessing the complex emotional roots of clients' pain, and developing the moment-to-moment process and experiential skills needed to work with emotion in ways that facilitate deeper change. Through supervision, Tara hopes to support clinicians in becoming more confident, emotionally responsive EFT therapists so that more clients can experience the transformative potential of the approach.

Tara works therapeutically with clients experiencing a wide range of concerns, including anxiety (social anxiety, panic, generalized anxiety), depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex trauma, psychosis, perfectionism, relationship difficulties, low self-worth, self-criticism, and overwhelming emotions. She has a particular interest in working with people who have experienced complex and interpersonal trauma, especially when painful relational experiences have given rise to chronic shame, disconnection, or deeply held negative experiences of the self. Tara is committed to practicing with cultural humility and applies an intersectional lens in her work with clients of diverse racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and sexual identities. She also values neurodiversity and works collaboratively with clients to honour their unique ways of processing, relating, and experiencing the world. Tara is mindful of the broader systemic and societal factors that can contribute to emotional suffering and seeks to create space for these realities within the therapeutic process.

Tara's work at eFIT also includes program development and research. She co-conceptualized and co-developed the Evolve Therapy Program, including the InnerMap and emotional processing groups. The program is designed to make the EFT process especially explicit, helping clients develop a precise understanding of the emotional patterns underlying their struggles and use that understanding to guide deeper emotional work. Tara also conducts research through McMaster University evaluating the group therapy model developed at eFIT and its potential to support enduring change.

Tara's earlier clinical training spanned hospital-based, specialty mental health, and private practice settings. She completed her pre-doctoral residency through the Calgary Clinical Psychology Residency Program, with rotations in a hospital-based mood disorders program, an early/adult psychosis program, and a community mental health clinic. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Early Psychosis Clinic at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton. Her graduate training also included placements within the Complex Care and Recovery Program and Work, Stress, and Health Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), as well as in various private practice settings. Following residency, Tara received in-depth training in Emotion-Focused Therapy through her clinical work and ongoing supervision at the Centre for Psychology and Emotional Health, experiences that have been deeply formative in her development as a clinician.

Tara strives to bring emotional depth, careful attunement, and clinical rigour to her work as a psychologist, supervisor, and program developer. She remains committed to helping clients reach and work through the emotional pain underlying their struggles, and to helping more people experience the potential of emotionally focused work.