About Kari
Kari Perez, MD, LCPC, brings a practical, person-focused style to therapy. She emphasizes clear steps and active listening to help people manage stress and anxiety. Kari writes short-term goals with clients and focuses on skills that matter in day-to-day life.
She has ten years of clinical experience and trained in counseling psychology at Loyola University. Early in her career she worked four years in a long-term residential setting with adults facing both addiction and mental health challenges.
Background and approach
That experience shaped her comfort with substance use issues and mood concerns. Her work blends ideas from several approaches so sessions match each person’s needs. She leans on techniques that teach coping skills, manage strong emotions, and change unhelpful thinking patterns.
Sessions are collaborative - the person’s perspective guides what comes next. Kari has worked both in outpatient settings and in-person programs, and also has experience providing virtual care. She helps people with anxiety, depression, stress, low motivation, low self-esteem, and addiction, plus related areas like body image and communication problems.
In sessions she focuses on practical tools for everyday life. She supports parents managing stress, people coping with life changes, and those building better habits. Clients work on concrete steps and measurable goals.
The pace and focus adapt to each person’s situation.
Approaches that translate well to online care
Client-centered therapy focuses on understanding each person’s experience and building a respectful partnership. It emphasizes listening and helping people find their own solutions, which fits well into video or phone sessions for conversations and planning.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, works on identifying unhelpful thinking and changing behaviors. It often uses short exercises and worksheets that can be shared in chat or sent between sessions to practice skills for anxiety, depression, and mood concerns.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT, teaches emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal skills. These skills can be practiced in live sessions and reinforced through text or live chat check-ins to support real-time use.
Finding the right approach is a shared process. The therapist will discuss goals, try methods that fit those goals, and adjust based on what helps. Clients and the therapist decide together which strategies to keep using.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to meet. Video calls allow full conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth or camera use is limited. Live chat and text messaging are useful for quick check-ins, homework support, and shorter updates between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and continue progress across settings.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Anger management
Also listed
- ADHD
- Body image
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Maryland
- Languages
- English
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