Two Decades Focused on the Professionals Who Run This City
Before Karen Conklin-Johnson became a licensed therapist, she spent nearly a decade in technology sales and sales management working inside the same high-performance corporate environments her clients come from. She knows what it costs to perform at that level. She knows the pressure of the room, the weight of the role, and the version of yourself you have to be at work and what happens to everything else when that version never gets to turn off.
That background is not a footnote. It is the reason Karen's clients trust her with things they have never said out loud to anyone.
Since earning her MA in Counseling Psychology from the University of Colorado Denver and building City Park Counseling from the ground up in 2006, Karen has spent over 20 years working with thousands of high-achieving individuals and couples, helping them move from stressed, overwhelmed, and running on empty to genuinely thriving. Not performing thriving. Actually thriving.
She is a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Daring Way Trained Facilitator, and a member of the American Counseling Association. Her approach is evidence-based, direct, and built for people who have no patience for work that does not move.
When High Performance Has a Cost
Executives, physicians, attorneys, founders, VP and C-suite leaders, and high-achieving professionals across technology, healthcare, finance, legal, and professional services. People in their late 20s through late 50s who are exceptional at what they do and struggling with something they cannot solve through effort alone.
They come from Cherry Creek, City Park, Park Hill, Central Park, Highlands, Sloan's Lake, and across Denver. Some are in crisis. Most are not. Most are high-functioning on the outside and quietly running out of margin on the inside.
Denver executives and high achievers tend to arrive with one of these:
01
Parallel Relationships
A marriage that has survived the climb but now feels like two people living parallel lives
02
Unresponsive
Burnout
Burnout that does not respond to vacation, exercise, or any of the standard fixes
03
Invasive
Anxiety
Anxiety that bleeds into judgment, sleep, and the moments that matter most outside of work
04
Fractured
Trust
An affair, emotional, sexual, or both, that has fractured something that used to feel solid
05
Insuficient
Performance Loop
The constant feeling of being criticized, of never doing things right, of never being quite enough
06
Entangled
Leadership
Leadership decisions entangled with identity, fear, and patterns that keep repeating
07
Compressed
Family Margin
Kids in the picture and no idea how to find space for the relationship, let alone for yourself
08
High-Status
Emptiness
A sense that you have built something real and still feel empty, disconnected, or stuck
These are not character flaws. They are the predictable cost of sustained high performance without adequate internal support. And they respond to clinical work in ways that coaching, productivity systems, and sheer willpower do not.
Deeper Than Coaching, Built for Your World
Executive coaches work on goals, strategy, and behavior. That work has value. It also has a hard ceiling.
Executive Coaching
Executive coaches work on goals, strategy, and behavior. That work has value. It also has a hard ceiling.
Coaches are not licensed to treat clinical burnout, anxiety disorders, trauma responses, imposter syndrome, or the deep psychological patterns driving chronic stress, relationship breakdown, and identity fracture. When the problem has clinical roots, and at this level it almost always does, coaching works around the edges of what actually needs to change.
Clinical Psychotherapy
Goes beneath behavior to address the operating system itself. Resolves the trauma, cellular fatigue, marriage gridlocks, and identity fractures that drive high-stress systems.
Karen is a licensed therapist with a clinical graduate degree and over 20 years of practice. She can go where coaching cannot. She also brings the structured, direct, goal-oriented approach that high-achieving clients require. Her clients do not come for open-ended conversation. They come because they want to understand what is actually driving the problem and change it at the root.
Evidence-Based, Built for High-Stakes Lives
Karen's approach is evidence-based and draws from multiple clinical frameworks depending on what each client needs.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Targets the cognitive structures driving perfectionism, performance anxiety, and the over-functioning loops that trigger stress.
Internal Family Systems Work
Surfaces the parts of you that over-control, micro-manage, or feel fraudulent. Helps you integrate these aspects so you can lead with genuine inner clarity.
Somatic Approaches
Addresses the neurological toll of years of high cortisol. Re-trains a nervous system that has forgotten how to disengage from emergency mode.
Gottman & Emotionally Focused Therapy
Provides strategic scaffolding for couples where heavy career demands have created parallel lives, conflict loops, or emotional distancing.
The Daring Way™
A highly researched, clinical methodology based on Dr. Brené Brown's research. Tackles shame resilience, courage, and leadership vulnerability.
Sessions are in person at City Park Counseling in Denver. Direct, structured, and focused on the patterns underneath, not just the symptoms on the surface.
The Reputation Built Over Two Decades
Karen's clients describe her as encouraging, compassionate, pragmatic, and direct. They say she holds firm on what matters most and believes in their capacity to change, grow, and evolve, even when they have stopped believing it themselves.
She does not tell people what they want to hear. She helps them see what is actually happening and gives them the tools to change it.
What Thriving Actually Looks Like
01
Clarity Over Anxiety
Decisions made from strategic clarity instead of anxiety, defense, or unexamined fear of loss.
02
Supporting Sanctuary
A marriage or relationship that feels like a source of genuine support and sanctuary rather than another demand.
03
Total
Presence
The structural ability to be fully present: in the boardroom, at home, and inside your own mind.
Clients come in managing. They leave differently. Over time, that means:
04
High-Pressure Communication
Communication that holds and functions under heavy clinical or business pressure instead of fracture.
05
Quiet Internal Dialogue
Less biological energy spent managing emotional friction and more available for pure creation and enjoyment.
06
Sovereign
Identity
An authentic sense of self that does not rise and fall with the next transaction, performance metric, or audit.
07
Deliberate
Margin
The absolute capacity to carve out actual space for your wellness, your partner, and your curiosity.
Schedule a Confidential Consultation
The Leaders Who Get the Most Out of This Work Are the Ones Who Stop Treating It as Optional.
You have been managing this longer than you should have. The professionals who see the most change are the ones who stopped waiting for a better time and started treating their internal life with the same seriousness they bring to everything else they build. If you are ready, the next step is a confidential consultation.