Karena Franses, LCSW

Karena Franses is a licensed clinical social worker with 28 years of practice. She brings long experience from both hospital and independent-practice settings and centers kindness and compassion in her work. Many people come to her seeking relief from pain related to relationships, addiction, grief, or changes in life circumstances.

She spent over two decades as a social work supervisor in an outpatient HIV clinic in San Francisco. That work involved supporting people through loss, medical crises, addiction, trauma, and the effects of discrimination and housing instability. Later she maintained a small psychodynamic practice seeing individuals and couples with relationship concerns, body image struggles, and self-harm risks.

Karena names Buddhism and daily meditation as influences on her approach. She aims to meet people where they are and to help them uncover the strengths already inside them. Sessions often focus on reducing immediate suffering and clearing obstacles that keep someone stuck.

Clinically she uses Motivational Interviewing and psychodynamic therapy to guide the work. Motivational Interviewing is practical for building readiness to change, especially around substance use and health behaviors. Psychodynamic work looks at long-standing patterns and the feelings beneath them.

People seek Karena for a wide range of concerns including anxiety, depression, bipolar mood issues, intimacy and jealousy, caregiver stress, and life purpose questions. She works with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender concerns as part of a broader practice. Her license is LCSW in California and she sees clients in English.

How her approaches translate to online therapy

Karena uses Motivational Interviewing to support people who want to make concrete changes. This approach is a collaborative conversation that helps someone weigh options, strengthen motivation, and take small steps toward goals. It is often used with substance use, health behavior changes, and commitment issues.

She also draws on psychodynamic therapy, which pays attention to long-running patterns and underlying feelings. That work helps people understand why they repeat certain relationship or self-image patterns and can reduce shame and isolation over time.

Finding the right approach is a team effort. She will talk with each person about goals and preferences and adapt the balance of motivational and psychodynamic work. Clients and therapist decide together what feels most helpful as therapy progresses.

The biography does not list specific session formats, so confirm the available online options before booking. Online therapy can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy life, support shorter check-ins when time is limited, and remove travel time that might otherwise be a barrier. Licensed professionals can work effectively over distance while tailoring sessions to individual needs and schedules.