Karen Foley

Karen Foley is a Washington LICSW with 32 years of clinical work. She works with people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, addictions, trauma and abuse, low self-esteem, and depression. She also focuses on body image, communication problems, control issues, divorce and separation, forgiveness, guilt and shame, isolation and loneliness, life purpose, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress, self-love, and social anxiety. Karen begins by treating each person as the expert on their own life. Sessions are conversational and practical. She listens for strengths and resources clients already have. From there she helps people try concrete steps to reduce stress and manage difficult feelings. Her approach draws on client-centered work along with cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy tools. Mindfulness exercises and motivational interviewing techniques are used to increase awareness and sustain change. She introduces skills in small, usable pieces so people can practice between sessions. Over three decades of practice have included work with grief, loss, and survivors of domestic violence. That background informs a careful, paced way of addressing trauma and its effects on daily functioning. She emphasizes coping strategies for panic and persistent worry. People who come feeling stuck about what matters next or unsure how to move forward will find straightforward conversations about goals and next steps. The first sessions typically focus on priorities and realistic experiments to try between meetings. To begin, clients complete a short matching questionnaire and then schedule a first session.

How her therapeutic approaches translate to online work

Karen uses client-centered therapy to focus on each person’s priorities and perspective. That means conversations are grounded in what the client says matters most, and the therapist reflects and clarifies to help identify next steps. She also draws on cognitive behavioral therapy, which breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and actions. CBT exercises are practical and often include short between-session tasks to test new ways of thinking and behaving, useful for anxiety and mood concerns. Dialectical behavior therapy skills feature when strong emotions or self-destructive patterns are present. DBT-style skills teach ways to manage distress, tolerate crisis moments, and improve interpersonal effectiveness in everyday life. Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and what feels doable, then recommend techniques to try. That decision is collaborative and can shift over time as needs change. Confirm which session formats are available before booking since the biography did not specify them. Online sessions can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy week, shorten travel time, and allow for quick check-ins that support practice between meetings. Different formats can suit quieter surroundings, lower bandwidth, or a brief focused session during a work break depending on your needs.