Karena Franses, LCSW

Karena Franses is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, CA LCSW, with 28 years of experience. She works with adults facing addiction, relationship strain, grief, anxiety, depression, and issues around intimacy and self-esteem. Her practice also includes codependency, caregiver stress, body image concerns, and life transitions.

Karena frames her work around curiosity and steady listening. She draws on many years in a county hospital HIV clinic and a private psychotherapy practice in San Francisco. That mix brought repeated exposure to addiction, trauma, serious illness, and the long-term effects of stigma and poverty. She uses those experiences to help people sort through what keeps causing them pain.

Her clinical approach includes Motivational Interviewing and psychodynamic therapy. In practical terms that means she helps people notice patterns that repeat, talk about what motivates choices, and find ways to try different steps forward. Sessions can focus on coping skills as well as understanding deeper emotional patterns.

Karena says the answers to suffering often live inside the person who is hurting. Much of the work is about lifting the fog that hides those answers. She brings a steady, reflective manner shaped by a long personal practice of Buddhism and daily meditation.

Her background includes 21 years supervising social work in an outpatient HIV clinic serving thousands of patients and many years in private practice working with individuals and couples. People come to her when they need help managing addiction, grief, communication problems, and the strain of caring for others.

How her approaches translate to online work