About Karen
Karen Pelligra is a licensed mental health counselor in New York with 22 years of experience. She helps people who are feeling overwhelmed by anxiety, stress, depression, grief, or big life changes. Karen aims to make the first steps feel manageable and reassuring.
She has worked in outpatient community mental health, inpatient psychiatric settings, and home-based family services. That range gave her lots of experience with crisis moments and ongoing struggles.
Background and approach
She uses practical tools people can try between sessions. Karen blends several approaches to match each person’s needs. She draws on client-centered work to listen and build trust.
She uses cognitive behavioral techniques to address unhelpful thinking patterns. She also brings in mindfulness and skills from dialectical behavior therapy to manage intense emotions. Her practice covers many concerns, including relationships, addictions, trauma and abuse, parenting stress, mood disorders, panic and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, postpartum depression, and chronic illness.
She also supports people dealing with adoption and foster care issues, first responder stress, and compassion fatigue. Karen describes therapy as a collaborative process. She helps clients set clear goals and tries simple, concrete strategies that can be adjusted as needed.
The focus is on steady progress and practical coping skills. People can expect straightforward conversation, hands-on tools, and a focus on what changes will help most in daily life. Karen looks forward to working alongside each person as they navigate their current challenges.
Practical therapy tools delivered online
Karen commonly uses client-centered therapy to create space for people to talk and feel heard. That approach focuses on understanding each person’s experience and building a trusting working relationship. She also uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help identify and change thinking and behavior patterns that fuel anxiety or depression. CBT offers clear steps and homework people can use between sessions.Finding the right approach is a team effort. Karen works with each person to decide which methods fit their goals and preferences. She adjusts strategies as progress is seen and invites feedback so the work stays useful and focused on what the client wants to change.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone meetings, live chat, or text-based messaging to give flexibility. Video is helpful for in-depth conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions can be shorter check-ins or work when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging allow brief updates, skills practice, or support between meetings. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to keep steady momentum toward goals.
Questions people ask
What issues does Karen commonly address?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How much experience does she have?
What credential does she hold and where is she based?
Which languages are supported?
Can international clients work with her?
What session formats are available?
How are costs and starting therapy handled?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- 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
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 22 years
- Licensed
- New York
- Languages
- English
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.