About
A place to be honest, without managing anyone else’s reaction.
I am Karla E. Marmolejos, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder of Dare To Flourish. For more than thirteen years I have worked with people through the parts of life that are hardest to say out loud.
- 13+ years of clinical experience
- Licensed in New York State
- Therapy in English & Spanish
- Telehealth only
Why I became a therapist
People deserve somewhere they are not being assessed.
I became a therapist because I believe people deserve a place where they can feel seen, heard, valued and supported without judgment. That sounds like a modest thing to want. In practice it is rarer than it should be — most people spend their lives calibrating what they say to the person listening.
What I find most meaningful in this work are the moments when something shifts: when a client recognizes their own strength after years of describing themselves as weak, finds language for something they had never been able to name, or starts to believe that change is genuinely available to them. Those moments rarely announce themselves. They tend to arrive quietly, in the middle of an ordinary session.
That is also where the name of this practice comes from. Flourishing takes daring — the willingness to look honestly at what has happened, at what you have been doing to cope, and at what you would like to be different. Most people are braver than they give themselves credit for by the time they reach out at all.
My approach
Collaborative, conversational, and grounded in practical reality.
Clients often describe me as warm, genuine, encouraging and approachable. What I hope they also find is that I am useful — that sessions go somewhere, and that what we discuss holds up when they are back in their actual life on Thursday afternoon.
I combine clinical knowledge with warmth, cultural awareness, creativity and practical tools. I adapt therapy to the person in front of me rather than moving everyone through the same sequence, because people are not interchangeable and their difficulties are not either.
Depending on what fits you and what we are working on, sessions may draw on any of the following. Not every approach is used with every client, and we talk openly about what is and is not working. I have completed specialized training in TARGET, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Functional Family Therapy.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Examining the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behavior, and testing beliefs against evidence.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Building a different relationship with difficult thoughts, and moving toward what you actually value.
- DBT-informed strategies
- Practical skills for emotional regulation, distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness.
- Psychodynamic therapy
- Understanding how earlier experiences and relationships shape present-day patterns.
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Working from existing strengths toward a specific, defined change.
- Motivational Interviewing
- Working through ambivalence about change without pressure or persuasion.
What you can expect
What the hour actually looks like.
A conversation, not an interrogation
Sessions feel like a genuine exchange. I ask questions, I tell you what I notice, and I say what I think. You will not sit in silence waiting for me to speak.
Questions that go somewhere
I am listening for the pattern underneath the situation you are describing — because that is usually where the useful work is.
Something practical to take with you
Understanding why something happens matters. So does having a strategy for the next time it does. We generally work on both.
Warmth with accountability
I will not rush you, and I will not simply agree with everything either. If a pattern is costing you something, I will say so — kindly, and directly.
Therapy adapted to you
I draw on several approaches and choose between them based on the person in front of me, rather than putting everyone through the same process.
Honesty about fit
If I am not the right clinician for what you need, I will tell you plainly and help you look in a better direction.
Cultural responsiveness
Your context is not a footnote.
Culture shows up in therapy constantly, usually without being named. What loyalty to your family requires of you. What is simply not discussed. What it meant to be the responsible one, or the one who made it, or the one who left. Whether asking for help registers as reasonable or as a failure.
I pay attention to those threads because they are typically part of the difficulty and part of the resource. Being culturally responsive does not mean I will assume I already know your experience — communities are not uniform, and two people from the same background can have entirely different relationships to it. It means I will ask, and that you will not have to teach me the basics first.
Where faith is part of what grounds you, it is welcome in the room as part of your values. Dare To Flourish is not a faith-based practice, and I will not import a framework you did not bring.
Bilingual therapy
Speak in whichever language the thought arrives in.
I provide therapy in English and Spanish. That means therapy conducted in Spanish by a bilingual clinician — not an English session delivered through translation, and not a service where you are asked to pick a language and stay in it.
For many bilingual people, emotional material is not evenly distributed across their languages. Childhood tends to live in one. Professional identity often lives in the other. Moving between them within a single session is normal here, and frequently where the most useful material surfaces.
Si prefiere hablar en español, puede hacerlo desde la primera consulta. No hace falta explicar el contexto cultural antes de llegar a lo que realmente quiere decir.
Experience & education
Professional credentials.
Dare To Flourish LCSW PLLC is a professional limited liability company registered in New York State.
- License
- Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
- Licensed in
- New York State
- Education
- Master of Social Work — Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
- Experience
- 13+ years of clinical practice
- Languages
- English and Spanish
- Training
- TARGET (Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy) · Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) · Functional Family Therapy (FFT)
- Modality
- Telehealth throughout New York State
- Clients
- Adults 17+, couples and families
If any of this sounds like the kind of support you have been looking for.
A 15-minute consultation is the simplest way to find out. We can talk about what has been going on and whether working together makes sense — with no obligation either way.
15 minutes, free, and no obligation to book a session afterward. Scheduling continues on Headway.
- Therapy in English & Spanish
- Telehealth across New York
- Response within two business days