Karen's Specialties

• premarital counseling
• marriage enrichment
• sexual issues & sexual abuse
• couple and family issues
• stepfamily functioning
• child & adolescent behavior problems
• depression & anxiety
• Attention Deficit Disorder
• spiritual concerns
• singles and dating
• separation & divorce counseling
• adoption issues
• infertility
• domestic violence
• Supervision for licensure for counselors and marriage and family therapists in MO & KS

Enrichment Skills in:

• parenting
• marriage
• communication
• stress reduction
• self-esteem
• spirituality
• sexuality/tantra

Couples
Karen loves to work with couples with all types of issues except active, ongoing substance abuse issues. She has had great success with conflicted couples, affairs, premarital counseling, couples who live together, infertility, and marriage enrichment. She has a number of different counseling styles and will custom tailor an approach to your situation based on your goals. Other therapists have referred their challenging couples to her! As Karen says, "I enjoy the challenge of difficult situations!"

Parenting and Families
Karen commonly coaches parents on parenting skills and tactics for their particular situation, whether it be dealing with blended family issues, a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, oppositional behavior, biting in toddlers, temper tantrums, or child sleep problems.

Karen has worked with a number of situations in which the family concerns relate to adult children and their parents and has good success in these cases.

Children and Teens
Karen loves to work with children and uses a combination of play therapy and family therapy along with working with the child's school when necessary. She has helped children of divorce, anxious children, children who won't sleep in their rooms, acting out children, oppositional children, children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, depressed children and more.

As with children, Karen works with teens, their families, and their school when appropriate on teen depression, anxiety, and oppositional behavior. Karen even has a wonderful video and workbook on dealing with teen oppositonal behavior that she loans out to clients.

Individuals
Karen sees individuals most commonly to address depression, anxiety, spiritual issues, meditation, dating, relationship patterns, self esteem, mid-life crises, relationships with adult children, spending issues, and more.

Sexual Issues
Karen is a Certified Sex Therapist through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists - www.aasect.org. This is a designation that only a handful of therapists in Kansas City have.

Karen works with couples and individuals on sexual issues including desire discrepancies, enhancing intimacy, loss of interest in sex, sexual abuse, teen and child sexual issues, affairs, women’s sexual issues, sexuality after medical problems, alternative lifestyles, and more. She is also a tantra (sacred sexuality) teacher and offers classes to individuals and couples. See the “Sacred Relationship” section of this website.

Premarital Counseling, Dating Assessment, or Marriage Enrichment
Premarital Counseling, Dating Assessment, or Marriage Enrichment gives you an opportunity to assess your relationship, learn skills that will help your relationship to be a success, and find out your strengths and areas that could use some growth. We focus on building skills in communication, conflict resolution, making time for each other, negotiating chores, parenting, stepfamily issues, sexuality, finances, family and friends, and spirituality if important to you. Prior to coming in the first time, both partners take an assessment instrument online called Prepare or Enrich, which is sent to your email addresses. After you have both taken it, I get the results and spend about 30 minutes preparing them for you. Then we have 4 to 6 sessions of feedback in which you learn what is working in your relationship for you to build on and what needs growth. It is a fun, interactive process! You may be able to use insurance for this service.

Spiritual Counseling
Karen has been on the Spiritual Counseling staff of her church since 1994. She is a Christian and works with clients of all different spiritual orientations, believing that there are many equally valid paths to God. Common things she assists her clients with are their prayer life, meditation, finding a faith community, developing a relationship with God, couple spirituality, healing guilt and shame, healing religious abuse, and more. For those not interested in discussing spirituality, she is also respectful of their wishes and never tries to push anyone in any regard with their spirituality so long as it is healthy for them psychologically and spiritually.

Separation and Divorce Counseling
When couples are considering separation and divorce, they are usually under a considerable amount of stress. It is often one of the most difficult periods in a person's life and the entire family is affected. How well the parents deal with the separation and divorce determines to a great extent how well the children manage the challenge. Receiving some input and guidance on this difficult process can help to alleviate stress, keep partners interacting amicably, and keep the children out of the middle. Children often receive a great benefit from having a few sessions of their own to help with the changes. I work not only with individuals, divorcing couples, and children, but also teach classes on dealing with divorce.

Singles
Karen loves to work with single people to help them create great lives on their own, heal from past relationships, and attract their next right and perfect partner. She has given workshops for singles on avoiding the pitfalls of attracting the wrong partner and then how to attract one who is great for them!

Adoption
Karen is an adoptive parent of a daughter from China. Due to her desire to help other orphaned children, Karen worked with a couple of adoption agencies from 1995 through 2002 performing home studies, post placement visits, and counseling. Now Karen helps adoptive families who have problems with parenting, adoption issues, and child behavior.