About Carrie
Carrie Kirchner is a licensed professional counselor in Missouri who helps people manage strong emotions and find steadier footing in daily life. She focuses on clear, practical steps so clients can feel more in control and more hopeful about the future. Carrie draws on ten years of experience working with stress, anxiety, anger, depression, bipolar symptoms, and attention challenges.
She also helps people dealing with relationship strain, trauma and abuse, and major life changes.
Background and approach
Her work pays attention to patterns like abandonment, attachment wounds, avoidance, and feelings of emptiness. In sessions she uses straightforward strategies from cognitive behavioral therapy to identify unhelpful thinking and try different ways of responding. She also uses dialectical behavior therapy skills to teach emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and better communication.
Clients practice new skills between sessions to build small, steady changes. Her approach treats the person as the expert on their life. She helps people notice strengths, set achievable goals, and take steps that fit their daily routines.
Conversations are focused and goal-oriented, with room for learning to manage intense feelings. Carrie aims to create a space where people can talk honestly about problems like shame, impulsivity, isolation, and family strain. She guides practical problem solving while teaching concrete coping tools to use in the moment and over time.
How CBT and DBT Work Online
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on spotting and changing thoughts and behaviors that keep problems going. In short, clients learn to notice unhelpful thinking, test new ways of thinking, and try different behaviors that lead to better results. This approach is useful for anxiety, depression, body image concerns, and unhelpful routines.Dialectical Behavior Therapy emphasizes skills for managing intense emotions, improving distress tolerance, and communicating more effectively. DBT teaches concrete techniques for calming down in the moment and building steady routines, which can be helpful for anger, impulsivity, emotional overwhelm, and relationship strain.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, daily routines, and what feels most useful, then recommend a mix of CBT and DBT skills as appropriate. The plan is collaborative and can change as needs shift.
Online sessions via video calls, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives. Video is good for in-depth conversations and skill demonstrations, phone can be a simpler alternative with less bandwidth, and messaging or live chat can support regular check-ins and brief skill practice. These options offer flexibility for working people and those juggling appointments.
Questions people ask
What kinds of concerns does she work with?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How much experience does she have?
Where is she licensed and practicing?
Which languages are supported for sessions?
What session formats are available online?
How does payment and cost work?
How do I begin therapy with her?
What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Anger management
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Missouri
- Languages
- English