About Carmen
Carmen Garrison is a Licensed Professional Counselor who helps people manage stress, anxiety, and the ripple effects of trauma. She focuses on restoring hope and improving everyday functioning. Carmen works with adults to set small, realistic goals they can use in daily life.
Her style is warm and collaborative, aimed at helping people feel more capable and balanced. Carmen uses a person-centered approach that keeps the client's needs in the lead.
Background and approach
She blends mindfulness and solution-focused strategies to build practical skills. Sessions often include grounding practices, short goal-setting exercises, and steps to reduce worry and panic. Her background includes a master’s degree in clinical and counseling psychology from Chestnut Hill College and 12 years of experience in community mental health and independent practice.
That mix gives her familiarity with both crisis-facing work and longer-term counseling. Carmen pays attention to the whole person - mind, body, and daily routines - when helping someone recover a sense of balance. She supports people dealing with grief, relationship strain, changes at work or home, body image concerns, and questions about gender and identity.
In sessions she uses motivational interviewing techniques to help people find their own reasons for change. She also works with trauma-focused methods when past events are getting in the way of present life. The aim is to restore hope and build steady skills a person can use after therapy ends.
How Carmen’s approaches translate to online therapy
Carmen uses Client-Centered Therapy to keep each session focused on what matters most to the person. That means conversations follow the client’s lead and the therapist reflects back what is heard to help clarify feelings and priorities.She also incorporates Mindfulness Therapy to teach simple, moment-to-moment skills. These practices help with anxiety, panic symptoms, and rumination by training attention and calming the body. Motivational Interviewing is used to uncover a person's own reasons for change and to build small, achievable steps toward their goals.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. Carmen will discuss options early on and tailor methods to the client's needs, goals, and preferences. The plan can shift as progress is made so the person stays engaged and feels the work is useful.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues, while phone sessions can be a good fit when bandwidth or camera use is limited. Live chat and text messaging are useful for brief check-ins, homework, or quick support between longer sessions. These choices make it easier to fit therapy into busy days and to keep momentum on skills practice.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Also listed
- ADHD
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- Pennsylvania
- Languages
- English
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