About Kumi
Kumi Pledger is a Maryland-based clinician with an MD and a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor credential. She brings ten years of experience helping people manage anxiety, phobias, mood shifts, and sleep problems. She aims to make daily life easier by reducing worry and improving rest so people can enjoy more of what matters to them.
Kumi blends practical techniques with attention to personal history. Sessions focus on concrete skills for coping with stress, sleep routines, and unwanted behaviors while also looking at how relationships and past experiences affect current feelings.
Background and approach
She tends to use clear, straightforward tools that people can practice between meetings. Her background includes work with trauma, grief, addiction, and mood disorders such as bipolar. She also supports people facing parenting strain, career stress, divorce and separation, and challenges around intimacy and communication.
She brings experience supporting LGBTQ clients and first responders as well. Kumi works in English and Japanese and offers several online options to fit different schedules. Her style is compassionate and respectful, aimed at honoring each person’s strengths while helping them move forward.
People who want a mix of skills training and deeper relational work often find her approach helpful. She collaborates on goals, tracks progress, and adjusts plans when something isn’t working. The emphasis is on practical change that fits real life.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how early relationships shape current patterns. Online sessions can look at those patterns and help people notice how past bonds affect trust, closeness, and responses to stress. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, teaches concrete steps to change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. It is useful for anxiety, phobias, sleep problems, and mood concerns by breaking problems into manageable exercises and homework.Finding the right approach usually takes a little experimenting. Kumi will work collaboratively to choose methods that match a person’s goals and comfort level. She checks in often, adjusts techniques, and blends brief skills work with deeper relational exploration when that fits the client's needs.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to give flexibility. Video calls let you work face-to-face when interaction and visual cues matter. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to be on camera. Live chat or text sessions work well for shorter check-ins, skill practice, or times when writing is easier than speaking. These formats make it simpler to fit therapy around work, school, and family life while keeping the focus on practical change and progress.
Questions people ask
What kinds of concerns does Kumi address?
How would you describe her therapeutic style?
What is her professional background?
Where is she located and licensed?
Which languages are sessions offered in?
What session formats are available?
How much do sessions cost?
How do I begin working with her?
What this therapist works with
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Maryland
- Languages
- English, Japanese
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.