Karen Abrahamson, MA, Ph.D., LPC

Karen Abrahamson has been serving the NWA community as a mental health therapist for nearly 8 years, primarily in the primary and intermediate school systems. She loves working with children and adults who come with a wide range of difficulties they would like to address, including, anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma and childhood neglect, divorce related issues, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and obsessive/compulsive disorder, abandonment, and anger management, along with other serious mental health issues. 

Karen holds a Masters Degree in Community Counseling and a PhD in Religion about what it means to have human being, that is, to live in relationship with our communities, environment, and our selves. While she favors Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a top-down approach for helping to challenge unwanted thoughts, and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a bottom-up approach that helps individuals identify and mindfully accept their feelings, she also believes strongly in an eclectic approach with methods from Play Therapy and other helpful models of mental health therapy. 

Family and individual therapy are important elements, especially in regard to child therapy. She requires that parents accompany and/or meet with her alone at least once per month to help keep child therapy on track. Also important to her clinical skill is continuing education. She is currently working to complete a thorough Traumatic Stress certificate from the Trauma Research Foundation, Brookline, MA, and under the direction of Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, who is the author of The Body Keeps the Score. In her spare time, Karen loves reading, writing, hiking, spending time with friends and family. She is currently wheelchair bound due to recovering from a serious ankle break and postoperative infection.