About Karen
Karen Gifford, LCSW, CSW helps people who are struggling with anxiety, stress, depression, self-esteem, and relationship concerns. She focuses on practical steps that make daily life easier and supports people through big changes. Her tone is direct and compassionate, and she aims to help people feel steadier and more capable.
Karen draws on evidence-based therapeutic techniques to guide sessions. She helps clients identify patterns that keep them stuck and practices new ways to cope.
Background and approach
Sessions often focus on better communication, repairing attachment wounds, and reducing shame and isolation. She has eight years of experience working with issues such as abandonment, family of origin problems, caregiver stress, and first responder concerns. Karen also addresses divorce and separation, blended family questions, body image, and aging-related worries.
Her work often looks at how past relationships shape current patterns and choices. In sessions she uses straightforward tools and small experiments clients can try between meetings. The approach aims to build self-compassion, stronger boundaries, and clearer decision making.
She supports people dealing with guilt, infidelity, forgiveness, and the emptiness that follows major life shifts. Karen practices in Colorado and conducts therapy in English. She offers a paced and collaborative process that helps people meet concrete goals.
The focus is on helping clients feel more in control and more connected to the life they want.
How evidence-based approaches translate to online care
Karen uses evidence-based therapeutic techniques that focus on practical change and emotional understanding. One common approach she uses helps people recognize unhelpful thinking and try alternative thoughts and behaviors to reduce anxiety and low mood. This method is useful for panic, worry, and repetitive negative thinking.Another approach focuses on attachment and relationship patterns. It helps people identify how early relationship experiences shape current reactions, and then practice new ways of relating and communicating. This work can ease shame and improve connection in close relationships.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will discuss goals, try techniques, and adjust methods based on what works best. Clients help set priorities and decide which tools to keep using between sessions.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is helpful when visual cues and longer conversations matter. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is low or a quieter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging work well for short updates, brief coping skills coaching, or when writing feels easier than talking. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy days and to keep momentum between appointments.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Self-love
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Experience
- 8 years
- Licensed
- Colorado, Alaska, New Mexico
- Languages
- English
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