About Karen
Karen Pelligra is a New York licensed mental health counselor with 22 years of experience. She focuses on helping people who feel overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, depression, grief, anger, relationship strain, and life changes. Her approach is supportive and straightforward, aimed at helping people feel more able to cope day to day.
She listens first and then works together with clients to set clear, practical goals. Sessions mix problem-solving with skills practice.
How Karen works
Karen uses tools that help people manage strong emotions, reduce upsetting thoughts, and build routines that make life steadier. Her background includes work in community mental health clinics, inpatient psychiatric hospitals, and home-based family services. That variety shaped a flexible style that fits different needs and situations.
She has supported people dealing with trauma and abuse, addictions, eating concerns, bipolar disorder, and mood-related struggles. Additional areas of focus include adoption and foster care issues, chronic pain and illness, parenting challenges, first responder stress, and communication problems. She also helps with feelings of emptiness, shame, and isolation, as well as panic, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and postpartum depression.
Karen uses several practical therapy methods like client-centered work, cognitive behavioral strategies, dialectical behavior techniques, mindfulness, and motivational interviewing. Together with a client she decides which tools to use and how to pace the work. Her style aims to make therapy useful and realistic for everyday life.
Karen lists 6 ways of working on the entry:
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
- Grief
Also listed
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LMHC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 22 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | New York |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Practical therapy approaches for online care
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and building a respectful, nonjudgmental relationship. It helps people feel heard and more confident in making changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches concrete skills to reduce anxiety, depression, and unwanted behaviors.Finding the best approach is part of the work. Karen will collaborate with each person to choose which methods fit their goals and pace. That collaboration means trying tools, noticing what helps, and adjusting the plan over time so the work stays relevant and manageable.
Online therapy makes it easier to fit sessions into a busy life. Video calls are useful for face-to-face conversation and demonstrations. Phone sessions can be a good option when bandwidth is limited or when a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging let people share updates between sessions and get support when writing feels easier than speaking.
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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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