Karen Shaughness
Calm, experienced LCSW focused on family and parenting
- Credentials
- LCSW
- Experience
- 38 years
- Licensed in
- New York
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Karen
Karen Shaughness is a licensed clinical social worker who uses a client-centered approach to guide people through stressful times. She draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness to help with anxiety, depression, stress, and relationship concerns. Karen brings practical skills and a calm presence to sessions.
She practices in New York and has 38 years of experience as an LCSW. Her work focuses on a broad range of life challenges including addictions, family dynamics, grief, and parenting concerns.
Background and approach
She also supports people facing career stress, compassion fatigue, and coping with major life changes. Karen pays attention to everyday habits like sleep and coping strategies, and she helps people identify small, workable steps forward. Karen integrates CBT techniques to challenge unhelpful thoughts and build new coping behaviors.
She pairs that with mindfulness practices to reduce reactivity and increase calm in daily life. Motivational interviewing is used when people are weighing change, such as addressing substance use or shifting patterns in relationships. Across her years in hospital and clinical settings, Karen has worked with mood disorders, trauma and abuse, and issues such as obsessive thoughts, panic attacks, and social anxiety.
She also attends to women's issues, workplace stress, and the effects of isolation or disaster-related strain. Outside of work she values time outdoors and near water, and she enjoys kayaking, gardening, and long walks with her Golden Retriever. That grounded, steady approach carries into how she supports people in therapy.
How therapy approaches translate to online work
Client-Centered Therapy centers the person and their priorities, so online sessions begin by listening to what matters most and adjusting the work to those goals. This approach helps with relationship issues, parenting struggles, and life stress by making sessions practical and relevant.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on identifying thoughts and behaviors that keep problems going and testing small changes. Online CBT sessions often include short exercises or skills to practice between meetings to reduce anxiety, improve sleep, or manage mood swings.
Mindfulness therapy teaches simple attention and breathing skills to reduce reactivity and increase calm. These practices can be delivered effectively by video or phone and are useful for stress, trauma-related symptoms, and compassion fatigue.
Finding the right mix of approaches is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with each person to choose methods that match their needs, goals, and daily life. Sessions adapt as progress is made and priorities shift.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility - video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging let people connect from home or work. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy schedule, maintain continuity when life is unpredictable, and access consistent support without extra travel.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Mindfulness Therapy
Attention training: noticing thoughts and physical feelings as they arrive without being carried off by them. Much of it is practice you do yourself, so guidance over video or audio works much as it would in person.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- ADHD
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Grief
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 38 years
- Licensed
- New York
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Karen
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point