Karen Taylor, LCSW-C

MHS Clinician, Coordinator of Trauma-Focused Services

Pronouns: she/her/hers

I joined the JHU Counseling Center Staff in the spring of 2020, right before we transitioned to remote services due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Prior to Hopkins, I served as the Trauma Specialist for the US Naval Academy’s counseling center. I have also worked as a Trauma Therapist at TurnAround, Inc., and as a Social Worker and Mental Health Worker at Sheppard Pratt, in their residential treatment center and trauma units, respectively. I began my engagement with trauma as an undergraduate at Harvard and continued it through my graduate program at Smith College School for Social Work, where I received my MSW in 2012. I completed basic (50 hour) training in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy) with the EMDR Institute in early 2018 and have engaged in several advanced EMDR trainings since then. I am currently in training to become certified as a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher.

I take an integrative approach to therapy, drawing upon relational, psychodynamic, EMDR, internal family systems, mindfulness, interpersonal neurobiology, feminist, and cognitive behavioral theories and approaches. I believe that therapy works best when the process is co-constructed, when a “safe-enough” space can allow for vulnerability and risk taking, and when what gets nurtured in the protected space of therapy can be transferred out into your daily life. I strongly believe that a trauma lens is valuable for understanding the impact of racism and other forms of systemic and generational oppression and that a person-in-environment model recognizing intersectional identities and influences is important for understanding who and how we are.

Outside of work, I enjoy reading, trying my hand at wood working, being outside, and finding a good ratio of reverence to irreverence.