Karissa Thomas
Straightforward, compassionate support for life challenges
- Credentials
- LMSW
- Experience
- 7 years
- Licensed in
- Michigan
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Karissa
Karissa Thomas is a Licensed Master Social Worker who aims to help people feel heard and understood. She takes a straightforward, down-to-earth approach and stays curious rather than judgmental. Conversations with her are practical and often warm, with space for both humor and honesty.
She works from Michigan and offers services in English. Karissa believes people know their own needs. She brings questions and reflection to sessions, and helps translate what comes up into next steps people can try.
Background and approach
Her style balances compassion with clear suggestions so progress feels doable. She uses several evidence-based approaches to guide that work. Techniques from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy help clients notice what matters and commit to small changes.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is used to identify and shift unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns. Attachment-Based ideas inform how relationships and early experiences shape current struggles. Karissa has seven years of clinical experience as an LMSW - Licensed Master Social Worker.
She supports a wide range of concerns including stress, anxiety, depression, trauma and abuse, parenting, relationship issues, grief, and challenges like ADHD and addiction. Additional focuses listed include adoption and foster care, caregiving stress, body image, chronic illness, and aging concerns. Sessions can take place via phone, video, live chat, or messaging.
Karissa accepts international clients and works with each person to find a pace and plan that fit their life.
Therapeutic approaches and how they work online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people clarify what matters to them and take small steps toward those values. It focuses on noticing thoughts and feelings without getting stuck, which can help with anxiety, stress, and life transitions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions and offers concrete strategies to change patterns that cause distress. CBT is useful for mood concerns, worry, and behavior changes. Attachment-Based Therapy pays attention to how early relationships shape current patterns and can be helpful for connection and intimacy worries.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what feels most helpful. Together they decide which methods to try and adjust as needed, keeping the process collaborative and practical.
Online therapy offers flexibility for busy lives. Video calls let people meet face-to-face from home, phone sessions remove travel time, and live chat or text work well for check-ins or when writing feels easier. These options make it simpler to fit regular sessions into a schedule and to try different ways of connecting as needs change.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Less about arguing with difficult thoughts, more about loosening their grip and acting on what matters to you anyway. Values and committed action carry the work, which suits conversation at a distance.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Looks at how early bonds shaped what you expect from closeness, and how that plays out now with a partner, a parent, or your own children.
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.
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of concerns does she address?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How long has she been practicing?
Where is she based and what are her credentials?
Which languages and international options are available?
What session formats are offered?
How does cost and billing work?
How do I begin working with her?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- 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
Next step
Talk to Karissa
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point