Karen Durgans is an Independently Licensed Professional Counselor. She completed a BA in Psychology from Miami University, an MS in Counseling from the University of Dayton, and an MS in Media from Suffolk University in Boston. She has worked with adolescents and adults in a variety of settings, including intensive home-based, independent living, and residential facilities.
Karen is a Certified Dementia Practitioner with training in evidence-based approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Christian Counseling, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy-Informed, Family Systems Therapy, Reality Therapy, and Trauma Counseling. She worked as a health care educator on the outreach team of an Emmy Award-winning documentary about pediatric cancer (A Lion in the House). She witnessed “the power of story” to inspire hope, healing, strength, and community, which she incorporates into her personal therapeutic approach.
The counseling relationship begins with a time of discovery, a getting to know you and your story in a safe, nurturing, and honest environment. We explore together the lens through which you view and interact in the world around you. The impact of challenges, difficulties, and opportunities in life can have an impact like “chemo brain” in cancer patients, where thinking becomes fuzzy, emotions go out-of-whack, or decision-making is out of balance and off track.
Borrowing from dialectical behavior counseling, Karen seeks to empower clients to build a new narrative by gaining perspective and skills to stabilize their emotions, clarify and ground their thinking, and learn and practice more effective solution-finding strategies within a supportive community.
View Karen Durgans’s current licensing details on the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker, and Marriage and Family Therapy Board’s License Verification portal. Type their name in the search tool for confirmation.
