Kristie Pagel-Compagner

Kristie Pagel-Compagner is a licensed social worker with 25 years of clinical experience in Michigan. She centers sessions on clear, straightforward support for people facing depression, anxiety, trauma, and life transitions. Her manner is collaborative and calm, helping clients feel heard while they work through painful feelings and practical challenges.

Kristie uses approaches that focus on the whole person. Sessions often look at how past relationships shape present reactions and teach skills for managing strong emotions and difficult thoughts. She helps people strengthen communication, cope with caregiver stress, and handle chronic illness or pain alongside emotional strain.

She also works with mood disorders such as bipolar disorder and depression, and with problems like panic attacks, emptiness, guilt, and shame. Isolation and loneliness are among the concerns Kristie supports people to address, including ways to reconnect and build meaningful routines. Her work includes attention to family of origin issues and the impact of divorce and separation.

Kristie favors a practical balance of insight and skill-building. That can mean learning emotion regulation skills, shifting unhelpful thinking patterns, and naming long-standing relational patterns that repeat. She aims to help people find steadier footing and more effective ways to handle day-to-day stressors.

Clients can expect patient listening paired with concrete tools. The focus is on small, achievable changes that add up. Kristie invites steady progress rather than quick fixes.

How these approaches translate to online care

Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and responding to what matters most to the person in front of the therapist. It helps people feel heard and discover their own solutions through empathic conversation and reflection.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts influence feelings and actions. It uses practical exercises to change patterns that feed depression, anxiety, or panic attacks, and it often includes small homework tasks to practice new habits.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches skills for managing intense emotions and improving communication. It is helpful for people who need concrete tools to tolerate distress and reduce impulsive reactions.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist and client decide together which methods fit best based on the person's goals, needs, and preferences. Sessions can shift focus over time as priorities change, with a mix of skill-building and deeper reflection when useful.

Session formats are not specified in the biography, so confirm current session options before booking. Online therapy can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy schedule, reduce travel time, and allow shorter check-ins when life is hectic. Licensed professionals can tailor pacing and homework to what works in daily life, helping make steady progress without upending routines.