Karina Aquino

As a first-generation Latina and hard-of-hearing Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), I'm passionate about creating an authentic, one-of-a-kind space where you can work toward autonomy, healing, and personal growth. I've worked with patients across a wide range of ages, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, disability statuses, and mental health challenges, building a safe and empowering space where we can explore your experiences and goals together. Sessions are available in both English and Spanish.

Since graduating in 2021, my work has focused on trauma, relational dynamics, interpersonal and intersectional frameworks, identity-building, reconstructing personal narratives, existential processing of life stages, challenging core beliefs, and exploring the systemic and cultural factors that can affect mental health.

In all of this work, I'm committed to bringing a holistic, socially just, and collaborative perspective to our sessions, so that therapy feels like a safer, non-judgmental, and meaningful experience for you. Transparency and honesty are central to how I show up in the therapeutic space, because direct communication, accountability, and openness create the kind of supportive environment where real self-growth can happen.

In my approach to therapy, I believe the interpersonal experience is key to understanding your unique narrative, perspectives, and intersecting identities, and that understanding is what helps build real insight into the mental health challenges and life experiences you're facing. Supporting your self-reflection, change, curiosity, self-growth, and self-acceptance is at the heart of what I hope our work together can offer.

To meet you where you are, I draw on an eclectic mix of approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), psychodynamic, interpersonal, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), multicultural, trauma-informed, Internal Family Systems (IFS), relational, person-centered, and narrative therapy. Creative arts, mindfulness, psychoeducation, and humility are also part of how I practice.

My path to becoming a therapist began with my own personal challenges with mental health and with how therapy shaped my well-being along the way. Those experiences deepened my desire and commitment to help others with their own mental health journeys.

Transitioning from the patient's chair into my therapist's hat gave me a unique, firsthand understanding of the challenges you might face along the way, and it's part of why I'm committed to helping you empower yourself, challenge what's holding you back, and approach your own personal and emotional well-being with humility.

When I’m not wearing my therapist hat, I enjoy reading, cooking, dancing, creative arts, makeup artistry, spending time with my dog Zelda, and collecting anything Snoopy related!