About Karissa
Karissa Thomas is a Licensed Master Social Worker who helps people manage stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD, and relationship or intimacy concerns. She offers down-to-earth support for grief, trauma, addiction, and self-esteem struggles. Karissa works in Michigan and approaches each person with curiosity and kindness.
She uses a practical, straightforward style in sessions. Karissa listens without judgment and invites honest conversation. She encourages small, doable steps so progress feels real and manageable.
Background and approach
Her work draws on several evidence-informed approaches. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people spot and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy supports choosing actions that match personal values, even when feelings are difficult.
Karissa also uses client-centered and attachment-aware techniques to strengthen how people relate to themselves and others. Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills can be introduced for emotion regulation and coping when stress or intense feelings arise. People often come for help with parenting stress, career issues, sleeping problems, or life transitions.
Karissa pays attention to each person’s lived experience, including concerns like adoption, caregiving, chronic illness, and body image. She brings seven years of experience to sessions and aims to make therapy practical and human. Sessions are conversational and goal-oriented.
Karissa values collaboration and will work with each person to set clear, realistic goals and track progress over time.
How therapeutic approaches work online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings and still take action that matters to them. Online ACT can support work on values, motivation, and practical action plans. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying thoughts and behaviors that keep problems going and replacing them with more helpful patterns; this often includes homework and clear skill practice between sessions. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at patterns in relationships and how early relationship experiences shape current ways of relating, which can help with intimacy and communication concerns when discussed in sessions.Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what feels most useful. That makes it easier to choose or blend approaches in a collaborative way rather than committing to one method from the start.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to increase flexibility. Video is useful for deeper conversations and skills practice, phone works well when bandwidth is limited or for shorter check-ins, and chat or text messaging can support ongoing coaching-style prompts and brief updates. These options help fit therapy into busy lives and different routines.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hearing impaired
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Traumatic brain injury
- Trichotillomania
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Gottman Method
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 7 years
- Licensed
- Michigan
- Languages
- English
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