Karen Gano, LCSW-C, LCSW, CSW

Karen Gano is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than three decades of counseling experience. She focuses on helping people facing major life transitions, including midlife shifts, career changes, separation or divorce, and significant health challenges. Her way of working is practical and direct, aimed at helping clients regain a sense of direction and self-respect.

Karen practices a client-centered approach that emphasizes the person's own goals and strengths. She often uses motivational interviewing to help clients clarify what matters most and to build momentum toward change. Mindfulness and solution-focused techniques are woven into sessions to create short-term gains while addressing deeper patterns over time.

Her background includes extensive work as a medical social worker in emergency medicine, critical care, oncology, palliative care, and domestic abuse settings. That experience informs her approach to grief, caregiver stress, and serious illness. She also supports people dealing with addiction, anxiety, depression, and compassion fatigue.

Sessions emphasize practical coping tools, clearer decision-making, and small experiments clients can try between meetings. Karen aims to help people increase self-awareness, strengthen self-esteem, and expand their support systems. The work is collaborative and paced to each person's needs.

She holds the credential LCSW-C (Maryland) and is licensed as an LCSW in New Mexico, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maine. Sessions are offered in English and based in New Mexico.

How therapeutic approaches guide online work

Client-centered therapy starts by listening to what matters most to the person and shaping sessions around their goals and values. It helps when someone needs space to name their priorities and feel heard before deciding next steps.

Motivational interviewing focuses on what motivates change. It uses questions and reflection to help people find internal reasons to move forward, which can be useful for habit changes, addiction, or making big life decisions.

Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will collaborate with each client to test methods and adjust based on what helps most. That means trying techniques, reviewing progress, and choosing what to emphasize as goals evolve.

Confirm the available session options before booking, as formats are not specified here. Online therapy can make it easier to fit sessions into daily life - for example by reducing travel time, allowing a quick check-in during a lunch break, or making it simpler to continue care during relocation. It can also let people use mindfulness practices and homework tools between meetings to keep momentum going.