About Karen
Karen Santos is a PACFA credentialed psychotherapist and social worker with 12 years of practice in Australia. She supports people facing stress, anxiety, depression, grief and parenting challenges. She also helps those coping with trauma and major life changes.
Karen uses practical, down-to-earth methods to help people feel steadier in day-to-day life. Sessions prioritise what matters to the person in front of her. She listens closely to personal stories and links those stories to concrete ways to manage symptoms and reactions.
Background and approach
Her background includes community mental health case management and ongoing work in trauma-informed counselling. That experience guides how she notices the impact of past hurt on present choices and relationships. Karen brings a calm, patient presence and aims to help clients regain a sense of safety in their bodies and lives.
Her approach draws on Somatic Therapy to include bodily awareness, and she uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Emotionally-Focused Therapy tools to address thoughts and emotions. She is also developing skills in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and uses client-centred principles to keep therapy collaborative. Karen works in English and Tagalog.
She offers video calls, phone sessions, live chat and text-based messaging, so people can choose what fits their routine. She asks new clients to complete a short matching questionnaire before scheduling, so sessions start with clear goals.
How somatic and evidence-based approaches work online
Somatic Therapy helps people tune into bodily sensations and notice how stress or trauma shows up physically. In online sessions this might include simple grounding and body-awareness exercises that can be practised between meetings to reduce tension and dissociation.Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on noticing thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, then taking values-guided action. It can help with anxiety, depression and life transitions by teaching flexible ways to respond to hard emotions.
Client-Centred Therapy emphasises a respectful, non-judgemental relationship where the person sets the pace. This approach supports self-direction and helps people feel heard as they work through difficult topics.
Choosing the right combination is a shared process. A therapist will work collaboratively to match approaches to each person's goals, preferences and day-to-day context. That means methods can shift over time as needs change.
Online sessions are available by video call, phone, live chat or text-based messaging, which makes it easier to fit therapy into busy routines. These formats offer flexibility for families, people working shifts, or those in regional areas, while still allowing practical exercises and consistent follow-up between sessions.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- Languages
- English, Tagalog