About Carissa
Carissa Shobe is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Pennsylvania with 15 years working in mental health and substance use care. She focuses on helping people reduce distress and build skills that fit their everyday lives. Her work is grounded in practical tools rather than jargon.
Carissa uses a trauma-informed, whole-person lens to notice strengths and patterns that keep people stuck. She helps people identify coping habits that cause harm and replace them with healthier options.
Background and approach
Sessions aim to lower stress and increase choices for handling difficult moments. Her approach centers on teaching concrete skills you can try between sessions. That might include behavior-based exercises, emotion regulation techniques, or grounding practices to manage intense feelings.
She encourages steady progress toward values and goals. Carissa also addresses addiction and mood concerns including depression and bipolar symptoms. She works with people facing trauma, anger, low self-esteem, and relationship or communication struggles.
Other focuses include issues around attachment, codependency, dissociation, and sexual expression such as BDSM and kink. In sessions she blends practical therapies like CBT and DBT with mindfulness to help people notice thoughts and make different choices. The aim is to leave each session with at least one clear step to try.
She describes therapy as a collaborative process where the person’s goals guide the work.
Online approaches for skills and regulation
Carissa uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy to help people change unhelpful thinking and manage emotions. CBT focuses on identifying thought patterns and trying new behaviors to reduce symptoms like anxiety and depression. DBT adds practical tools for regulating intense emotions, improving distress tolerance, and sharpening interpersonal skills.Mindfulness therapy is also part of her work and teaches attention and present-moment noticing to reduce reactivity. These approaches are explained in simple terms and matched to what the person wants to achieve. Picking the right mix of methods is a collaborative process where goals and preferences guide the plan.
Online therapy gives practical benefits for making that collaboration possible. Video calls allow face-to-face discussion and skill modeling. Phone sessions can fit a short check-in or be used when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging work well for ongoing check-ins, reminders, or brief skill practice between sessions. This range makes it easier to move therapy into day-to-day life while staying focused on concrete steps and measurable progress.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Traumatic brain injury
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 15 years
- Licensed
- Pennsylvania
- Languages
- English