Tammy Brown, a licensed marriage and family therapist associate, works with individuals, couples, families, and any combination of participants that works best for each individual case at her Tumwater practice, Aqua Vita Therapy.
“For me, the more the merrier,” Brown says, with a smile. “I absolutely work with individuals, but if you’re sending someone – especially a child or adolescent – back into the same family system that hasn’t made any changes, that pattern still exists.”
Brown grew up in Thurston County’s Boston Harbor, then moved around a bit, before meeting her husband and moving back.
She originally attended the University of Washington in Tacoma with plans to be a pharmacist. “And then I realized how much I hated chemistry,” Brown says with a laugh.
“I decided I was going to do what I love, which is psychology,” she says. She had a professor at UW who did a lot of research around attachment and psychology. Brown began working with her as a research assistant, and soon realized the importance of attachment and how it would be central to her future practice.
Brown went on to receive her bachelor’s degree in psychology, and set her sights on graduate school, eventually choosing Pacific Lutheran University. She graduated last fall with her master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, and then opened Aqua Vita Therapy.
Brown is a solution-focused therapist, and her goal is to help clients unearth long-standing behavior patterns or negative perceptions that may be standing in the way of a more fulfilling or meaningful life.
“It’s a different way of looking at problem formation and how problems affect you and your relationships,” she explains.
Brown’s treatment specializations include therapy for depression and anxiety, counseling for couples and families, grief counseling, work and career issues, stress management, addiction and recovery, and conflict resolution.
The first time a client comes into Aqua Vita Therapy, Brown holds a longer session than the usual 50-minute meeting. “I like the first session to be an hour and a half or two hours,” she says, pointing out that the price is the same as a regular therapy session – a very reasonable $50.
“I really want to get a feeling for them and them a feel for me,” she says, explaining the longer introductory meeting. “It gives us a lot more time and freedom to look at the background and know what we’re jumping into.”
Brown gives an example of a new client coming in for depression. “I’d ask them to tell me when it started. Are there times when the depression is less? What’s different at those times?”
She then takes those little nuggets of information – for example, if a client says they weren’t so depressed the previous Tuesday, because they had to be somewhere – and attaches to that and asks further questions.
“Then they can see that the depression is not always happening and there are times when they have control,” Brown explains.
“I really meet people exactly where they’re at,” says Brown. “Sometimes they’re not ready to look at anything positive, and we have to spend a long time talking about the negative stuff.”
And for some clients, it’s a much longer process. “And that’s fine,” Brown says. “I am available where they’re at: if it’s four sessions or forty.”
She also points out that most people, when they initially come in to see her, have a problem that they’ve been dealing with for a long time. “That’s another reason I have a long first session,” she says, “so they can just get things off their chest and not be constrained by time.”
Brown accepts insurance co-payments and is happy to negotiate sliding-scale fees.
People are often surprised at her rate of just $50 per session – lower than most therapists. “I got into this because I really want to be there and affordable and available to people who might not have insurance or not normally be able to access that resource,” she says.
Being supportive of the community is important to Brown. “I’m involved with Pride and with the Olympia Free Medical Clinic. It’s part of who I am and the values that I have,” she says.
The name for Brown’s Aqua Vita Therapy practice means “water of life” in Spanish. “Being healthy, making good choices, having healthy relationships, and being grounded in your life is the water of life,” Brown says. “That’s what gives your life nourishment.”
Her favorite thing about being a therapist is when someone comes in and can report a small, positive change since their last session. “It’s not about making these huge life changes. That’s totally unreasonable for everybody,” Brown says, with a warm laugh. “We all live our lives and totally rearranging everything isn’t probable.”
But small changes are. If a client was, for example, able to say “no” to someone after struggling with standing up for themselves. Brown builds on that and praises the client for their success, helping them feel that they have power and control over their own life.
“That’s my favorite part,” Brown says, “when they start realizing those little things. Because those add up.”
Aqua Vita Therapy
116 East Lee Street, Suite C
Tumwater WA 98501
360.977.6624
