About Kumi
Kumi Pledger, MD, LCPC brings a decade of clinical experience to her work in Maryland. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, sleep problems, and the fallout from trauma. Her style is direct and compassionate, aimed at making day-to-day life feel calmer and more manageable.
She blends practical tools with a person-centered stance. Sessions often include mindfulness exercises and guided imagery to reduce worry and improve sleep. Cognitive and emotion-based techniques are used to address unhelpful thinking and strong feelings.
Background and approach
Kumi helps people navigate life transitions, relationship strain, and parenting challenges. She also supports those facing addiction, grief, identity questions, and work-related stress. Her experience includes working with clients who are LGBTQ and those dealing with attachment or abandonment concerns.
People who prefer a collaborative, steady approach tend to fit well with her style. She listens for strengths and builds on them. Treatment plans are practical, with skills to use between sessions.
Kumi holds an MD and is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. She provides services in English and Japanese and meets with clients through a range of online formats. If someone needs help with anxiety, sleep, or adjusting after loss or trauma, she offers tools to move forward.
Therapeutic methods and online care
Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how early relationships shape current patterns. It helps people understand closeness, trust, and responses to loss or abandonment and is useful for relationship and attachment issues.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It teaches practical skills to reduce anxiety, manage mood, and change habits that get in the way of daily life.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with each person to decide which methods match their goals and preferences, and she adjusts the plan as progress is made.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video allows face-to-face conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions can be shorter check-ins or work when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging suit people who prefer writing, need flexible check-ins, or want ongoing skills practice between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy around work, parenting, or travel while keeping consistent contact with licensed professionals.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Maryland
- Languages
- English, Japanese
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