About Karen
Karen Smith is a licensed professional counselor (LPC) practicing in South Carolina. She uses straightforward, practical care to help people facing relationship strain, depression, grief, and addiction. Her style is warm and respectful, and she aims to make the first steps into therapy feel manageable.
With ten years of experience, Karen focuses on problems many people find urgent and painful. She supports people dealing with trauma and abuse, low self-esteem, anger, and difficulties after separation or divorce.
How Karen works
She also helps those wanting to rebuild self-love, find life purpose, or work through forgiveness. Karen blends several approaches to fit each person’s needs. She draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice thoughts and choose actions that match their values.
Client-centered methods keep sessions grounded in empathy and the person’s own goals. She also uses motivational interviewing to increase readiness for change and narrative therapy to help people reframe difficult stories from their past. In practice this means setting clear goals, trying small experiments between sessions, and talking through what matters most to the person.
Karen says the first step takes courage, and she treats everyone with sensitivity and respect. She works collaboratively to build a plan that fits each person’s situation and preferences. If someone is unsure where to begin, she helps make a manageable path forward.
Karen lists 5 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.
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
- Self esteem
Also listed
Training and background
| Register | LPC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 10 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | South Carolina |
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 (ACT) helps people notice thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, then choose actions that match their values. It is useful for anxiety, depression, and finding direction when life feels confusing.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing them with real-life experiments. This approach is helpful for mood problems, negative thinking, and behavior changes that people want to make.
Client-Centered Therapy centers sessions on the person's experience, with empathy and active listening guiding the work. It helps people feel heard and clarifies their own goals for change.
Finding the right approach is part of the process. The therapist will collaborate with the person to pick methods that match their goals, needs, and preferences. That may mean combining ACT, CBT, and client-centered skills to create a practical plan together.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video calls let people use visual cues and longer check-ins. Phone sessions can work well when less bandwidth is available or when camera-free conversation feels better. Live chat or text messaging can support brief check-ins, quick problem-solving, or tracking small tasks between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives and to continue work from different locations.
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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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