About Karen
Karen Haggard is a licensed clinical social worker with 25 years of experience helping people who feel overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, grief, or big life changes. She meets each person where they are and focuses on practical ways to feel steadier and more connected. Karen uses straightforward, person-centered work to help people name what matters and take small steps toward it.
Sessions often look like talking through daily struggles, sharpening communication skills, and practicing ways to manage intense emotions.
How Karen works
She pays attention to trauma, relationship patterns, and issues like sleep, substance concerns, and burnout. Her background includes long-term clinical practice in Illinois and experience supporting people with mood concerns such as depression and bipolar disorder. She also addresses identity and intimacy-related issues, caregiving strain, chronic illness, and challenges tied to adoption and attachment.
That breadth helps when concerns overlap. Karen draws from approaches that teach skills and change habits, and from therapies that focus on relationships and values. She works collaboratively to pick methods that fit each person’s goals and pace.
The focus is on useful tools, clearer thinking, and rebuilding trust in one’s choices. Sessions are intended to be respectful and nonjudgmental. Karen encourages realistic goals and steady progress instead of quick fixes.
She helps people find ways to feel more present, manage stress, and reconnect with what matters most.
Karen lists 14 ways of working on the entry:
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method
- Hypnotherapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
What Karen works with
The areas below are the ones Karen selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Traumatic brain injury
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LCSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 25 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Illinois |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Approaches that guide online sessions
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people clarify their values and take small committed actions toward them while learning to live with difficult thoughts and feelings. It can help with anxiety, depression, and coping with life changes. Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how early relationship patterns affect current connections and emotional responses, which is useful for intimacy, trust, and relationship struggles. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and teaches concrete strategies to change unhelpful patterns; it is often used for anxiety, depression, and sleep or stress problems.Choosing the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to identify goals, try methods that fit those goals, and adjust over time. This makes sessions feel more tailored and practical rather than one-size-fits-all.
Online therapy offers flexibility for different rhythms of life. Video calls approximate an in-person session for deeper conversations. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to be on camera. Live chat and text-based messaging support quick check-ins, brief skill practice, or ongoing support between longer sessions. These options help people fit therapy into work, caregiving, or travel schedules while focusing on progress and usable skills.
Start online instead of waiting
Our partner service asks a few questions about what you are looking for and matches you with a therapist for sessions from home.
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Common questions
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A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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