Kumi Pledger, LCPC

Kumi Pledger is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) based in Maryland with ten years of clinical experience. She focuses on practical goals like sleeping better, reducing worry, and finding more joy in everyday life. Kumi speaks English and Japanese and is available to work with people inside and outside the United States.

Kumi draws on several therapy styles to tailor sessions to each person. She favors approaches that help clients understand past attachments, notice unhelpful thinking, and build stronger emotional skills. Sessions are aimed at reducing anxiety, improving mood, and addressing trauma and relationship concerns.

Clients come to her for many kinds of struggles. These include stress, depression, bipolar challenges, addiction, grief, parenting strain, intimacy issues, and concerns tied to gender identity or LGBT questions. She also helps with specific problems such as sleep disturbance, communication problems, abandonment and attachment issues, and challenges faced by first responders.

Kumi describes her work as compassionate and respectful. She pays attention to each person’s strengths and resources and uses them to support change. Her style blends supportive listening with concrete tools so clients can practice new ways of coping between sessions.

Practical matters are handled straightforwardly. Therapy uses a subscription model that can be canceled at any time, and scheduling is set after completing a short matching questionnaire and choosing a time that fits with the therapist’s availability.

How therapeutic approaches translate to online work

Attachment-Based Therapy helps people understand how early relationships shape current feelings and reactions. Online sessions using this approach focus on noticing patterns in relationships and learning new ways to connect and regulate emotions.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions link together. In online CBT, clients learn practical exercises to test unhelpful thoughts, build better routines, and reduce symptoms like anxiety or low mood.

Finding the right approach is part of the process. The therapist works collaboratively to choose methods that fit each person’s needs, goals, and preferences. Together they review what is helping and adjust the plan over time.

Confirm the therapist's current session formats before booking since specific options are not listed here. Online work can make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life - for example, sessions can save travel time, allow shorter check-ins during a break, or remove the need to be on camera for some meetings. Licensed professionals can tailor online sessions to focus on skill practice, emotional processing, or problem solving based on what a client needs.