About Karissa
Karissa Thomas is a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW) based in Michigan who helps people facing anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship challenges, and issues related to identity and stress. She brings a direct but compassionate style and focuses on making clients feel heard and understood. Karissa aims to empower people to take practical steps toward change.
She favors honest, down-to-earth conversations and can bring some lightness when appropriate. Karissa works in a curious, non-judgmental way.
How Karissa works
She treats people as the experts on their own lives and partners with them to clarify goals. Sessions tend to be straightforward and practical, with an emphasis on skills people can use between meetings. She also makes space for strong feelings and the messy parts of change.
Her approach draws on a mix of action-focused and relationship-focused methods. Karissa uses techniques that help with patterns of thinking, emotion regulation, and building stronger attachments. She blends teaching practical tools with exploring how past experiences shape current reactions.
With seven years of clinical experience, Karissa supports a wide range of concerns including grief, eating and body image struggles, addictions, parenting stress, career challenges, bipolar mood management, ADHD, and compassion fatigue. She also addresses specific life events like adoption and caregiver stress. She accepts international clients and conducts work in English.
People who choose Karissa can expect warm directness, clear goals, and practical exercises between sessions. She encourages honesty and vulnerability as useful parts of therapy. The focus is on steady progress and building skills that fit each person’s life.
Karissa 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)
- Gottman Method
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
What Karissa works with
The areas below are the ones Karissa selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hearing impaired
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- 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
- Stress, Anxiety
- Traumatic brain injury
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LMSW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 7 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Michigan |
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 work and what they do
A few of Karissa's go-to approaches include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Attachment-Based Therapy. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on clarifying personal values and taking steps that align with those values while learning to accept difficult thoughts and feelings. It can help with anxiety, depression, and life transitions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions interact and uses practical exercises to shift unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors; it often helps with anxiety, depression, sleep, and stress. Attachment-Based Therapy concentrates on how early relationships shape current connections, which can be useful for intimacy issues, communication problems, and healing from abandonment or attachment wounds.Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. Karissa will work with each person to match methods to their goals, needs, and preferences and will adjust the plan if something isn’t helping. Clients often try a mix at first to see what fits best.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. Video works well for deeper conversations and exercises, phone can be easier when bandwidth is limited, and chat or text can fit brief check-ins or times when typing feels more comfortable. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent around work, caregiving, or travel.
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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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