About Karen
Karen Pelligra is a licensed mental health counselor in New York. She brings 22 years of experience helping people who are anxious, depressed, grieving, or coping with big life changes. She aims to create a calm, respectful space where clients can talk through what matters most to them.
Karen has worked in outpatient community mental health clinics, inpatient psychiatric hospitals, and home-based family services. That range gives her experience with a wide variety of struggles, from relationship and family concerns to trauma and addictions.
Background and approach
Her approach focuses on making clients feel supported and empowered rather than lectured. In sessions she blends practical skills training with open listening. She uses methods that encourage clearer thinking, better emotion regulation, and stronger problem solving.
Clients can expect concrete tools for things like panic attacks, mood swings, obsessive thoughts, and compulsive behaviors. She also addresses stressors such as parenting challenges, adoption and foster care issues, chronic illness or pain, and separation or divorce. Work on self-esteem, grief, compassion fatigue, and burnout is offered in straightforward, goal-focused conversations.
Karen plans each session collaboratively with the person in front of her. She draws on client-centered therapy, cognitive behavioral techniques, dialectical behavior ideas, mindfulness, and motivational interviewing to match the work to each person's needs. Her goal is to help people find useful steps forward they can actually use in daily life.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and responding to what the client needs most. It emphasizes respect, empathy, and following the client's goals so each session stays relevant to the person's life and concerns.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, teaches practical ways to notice unhelpful thoughts and change behaviors that keep problems going. It is useful for anxiety, depression, panic, obsessive thoughts, and mood management because it offers step-by-step skills that can be practiced between sessions.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, highlights emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and better communication. These strategies help when strong emotions, relationship conflict, or impulsive behaviors make life harder.
Choosing the right approach is a shared process. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, try methods that fit those goals, and adjust over time. That collaborative planning helps find tools that feel useful and realistic.
Online therapy makes those methods accessible through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video is helpful for face-to-face conversation and skills demonstrations. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a simpler check-in is needed. Chat and messaging allow shorter updates and ongoing support between appointments, offering flexibility around work, caregiving, and daily schedules.
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of concerns does Karen address?
What is her general therapy style?
How much clinical experience does she have?
What are her credentials and where is she based?
Which languages are sessions offered in?
Can people outside the U.S. work with her?
What session formats does she use?
How do costs and scheduling work?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Grief
Also works with
- 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