Category: Business

Martha Tapia, Ph.D., and her Community Family Counseling provides family counseling to help with a variety of mental and emotional issues for children, adults, couples and families. She also is a certified clinical hypnotherapist who can help people dealing with post-traumatic stress, anger and depression. She approaches every case she handles holding firm to her deep commitment to her Christian faith. She brings her own unique background and training to her job and has helped many people in the three years she has worked as a therapist, since moving to Florida from New York in 2016. 

When I say unique, I’m guessing that most psychotherapists in our area probably were not working as a New York City police officer when 9/11 changed life in the United State forever. But, Martha was at Ground Zero the day after the towers fell, only two years after joining the police academy. 

“I missed the last police van to go to Ground Zero that day, so they kept me patrolling on Staten Island until the next morning,” she says. 

“The things I saw and smelled those days,” she says. “No one should have to see that. The body bags, the devastation. There’s no doubt that I had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) myself after what I saw and went through because of 9/11.” 

Like so many who worked at Ground Zero, Martha developed major health issues, including severe asthma, which she was diagnosed with in 2005, only three+ years later. She was pregnant with her daughter Marlene when she had issues with the pregnancy, especially great difficulty breathing. Marlene also has been diagnosed with asthma. 

“A lot of the kids of those first responders are having health issues, too,” she says. “But that’s not something that most people talk about.” 

“Breathing that air and eating food with white ashes that we would just wipe off, eat and keep working — we were all poisoning ourselves. Many of my fellow officers and firefighters lost their lives to the cancers and illnesses we were all dealing with.” 

Martha did end up retiring from the police force, but not until 2008, while working at Precinct 50 in The Bronx, after trying to arrest a suspect and having multiple people end up on top of her, herniating two of the discs in her back. 

“They put me on medication for my back, but it reacted with the asthma medication I was taking and I got more sick from it,” she says. “I went into a deep depression because I didn’t know how I would be able to take care of my kids. I just knew I had to survive for them.” 

With her early retirement, Martha went on to become a leader of a Girl Scout troop and went back to church, where she became a volunteer in the women’s group. “I couldn’t just be retired,” she says. “I had to stay busy.” 

Two years later, she met and married her husband John Bevilacqua, who worked for a labor union, but when he retired in 2016, they did their research and ended up buying a house in Wesley Chapel. 

Martha and John have seven children and a grandson (named Zion) and granddaughter (Antonella) between them — Martha’s sons Matthew and Adam and her daughter Marlene. She also raised her niece Keren and nephew Phillip. Her other nephew Geovanny, who is a autistic, but high-functioning and in his 40s, and John’s daughter Madison also live with them. 

More Trauma & A Life Change 

“I understood what happened to me after 9/11,” Martha says. “What I didn’t know is how that trauma affected my older son Matthew. He was only 8 years old at the time and he had a panic attack because he was so worried about me. He was diagnosed with anxiety, so we put him in counseling, but eventually, they said he was fine.” 

Unfortunately, Matthew’s anxiety resurfaced in high school and got even worse with each move the family made and worst of all when the family moved to Florida when he was in his 20s. 

“Matthew was having panic attacks all the time — he was afraid of dying —and all anyone did was put him on medication, which made him sick. I knew I had to find another way.” 

That different way came in the form of Dr. Henry Castellanos, a Bible-based “Theo-Therapist” who was preaching at Martha’s Spanish-speaking church in Zephyrhills. Dr. Castellanos, an expert in what is known as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) therapy, is from Puerto Rico and he teaches EMDR therapy at the Ecotheos International University Bible College & Seminary he owns in Toa Baja, PR. 

“Once I learned about how EMDR therapy works from Dr. Castellanos and he tried it with Matthew, I saw how effective it was and I knew I needed to find out more.” 

Martha asked people to hook her up with Dr. Castellanos so she could learn more about EMDR and she sat and talked about it with him at an event. “I told him I was desperate to figure out how to help my son,” she says. “He’s about to lose it and I’m afraid he’s going to end up in a mental institution.” 

Martha ended up bringing Dr. Castellanos to her house because Matthew was still in her car having a panic attack. “He said his English was not very good, so he would need someone to be the translator between him and Matthew, so of course, I agreed to be the translator.” Martha is from Ecuador, so she was fluent in Spanish and, since she had lived in New York since age 16, she also is fluent in English and her Latin accent makes everything she says in English sound better. 

She says that where eight other therapists had failed, Dr. Castellanos was able to get through to Matthew with EMDR. “We took a family cruise to Puerto Rico, so I told my husband to take the kids to the beach because I was going to take Matthew to see Dr. Castellanos again at the University. He did a few intensive sessions with him and I saw an instant change in my son. He totally healed him and Matthew has never had that type of anxiety since then.” 

In 2019, she decided that since she was retired and was looking for something to do, she would enroll online at Ecotheos University to get her degree in Christian Clinical Counseling. She also attended two one-week sessions in person at the University, where she became certified in EMDR by Dr. Lucina Artigas, the creator of what is known in EMDR as the “butterfly hug,” which is used worldwide. 

At the same time, Martha and John were opening Martha’s Grill & Bar in Dade City, but when that shut down due to Covid in 2020, she decided to fully dedicate herself to becoming a therapist. In Oct. 2021, she had earned her Ph.D. degree (graduating Summa Cum Laude) in Philosophy Counseling and Theo- Therapy Systemic Therapy. She also is certified with the International Reciprocity Board of Therapeutic Professionals (IRBO) Therapeutic Family Counselor II and has earned a Certificate of Completion as an EMDR Therapist for Children & Adolescents. 

To enhance her skills as a therapist, she also began studying how hypnotherapy also can help patients and, in 2022, she was certified as a Hypnotherapist and Clinical Hypnotherapist by the Institute of Hypnotherapy in Tampa. Earlier this year, she also has added ZYTO Link scan services, which uses your smartphone to scan your face and read the biometrics and emotions that help people improve their wellness while working on their negative emotions that needs to be addressed. 

“We recommend selective natural products that assist your body and lifestyle system to help your body feel healthier and have an energetic balance,” Martha says, adding that her daughter Keren Bolanos is the ZYTO Link technician, who handles the scans. 

She wasn’t planing to open a private practice, “but my husband convinced me that I could do it,” Martha says. “And, here I am!” 

Starting with counseling only for individuals, she says that she believes that God shifted her direction, “like he wanted me to do this. I wouldn’t be where I am if not for Him.” 

“I wanted to specialize in helping kids, with EMDR and Play Therapy, that’s why I got my child EMDR certification,” she says. “But somehow, my practice has evolved into nearly 80% marriage and couples therapy. The Christian base helps a lot with that, as long as both partners are still wanting to stay together. I help them find common ground.” 

With all of these tools at her disposal, Martha says she is proud to be able to help people, “one family at a time. It’s OK to feel angry. It’s OK to feel sad. It’s not OK when it lingers.” 

As for her foray into clinical hypnotherapy, Martha says that, “Sometimes, you have to go deeper with people, reach their subconscious mind and hypnotherapy is a relaxation technique. Especially as a Christian, hypnotherapy gets a bad rap, but I have used it to help so many people. It allows me to get to a deeper level with them.” And, never fear, you never lose consciousness and Dr. Martha won’t turn you into a chicken or get you to bark on command. 

“Some people do get stuck with EMDR, but hypnotherapy helps me get you un-stuck,” she says. “It’s just good to have many options to help people.” 

Martha also wanted me to mention that she is very committed to her new church — the new Paradise Community Church on Boyette Rd. She also occasionally posts on Facebook that she hosts Christian-based events at her home. She also sponsors the annual “Dance Your Dream” gala hosted by Hope Services, a not-for-profit vocational service organization in Wesley Chapel that helps people living with disabilities find jobs. “My son Adam (who is developmentally disabled) and nephew Geo (who is autistic) have enjoyed attending the gala, too, “ she says. 

I also can give a personal testimonial about Dr. Martha. Jannah had some PTSD of her own following the serious car accident we had in 2017. She had spoken with other therapists since then because driving on the highway since that day had terrorized her. 

But, two hypnosis and EMDR sessions with Dr. Martha seems to have helped Jannah get over her panic while being a passenger in a car. Hearing how much better she’s doing made Martha very happy. 

“I just love helping people,” she says. 

Dr. Martha Tapia’s Community Family Counseling is located at 2604 Cypress Ridge Blvd., For appointments and more info, call (813) 803- 5968 or visit CommunityFamilyCounselor.com.