Karem Muksed, LCSW, LMSW · Chicago & online throughout Illinois and Michigan
I work with individuals, couples, and families who are stuck in repetitive relationship patterns, emotional gridlock, trauma, or other forms of distress. As a highly trained psychotherapist, I have created a therapeutic method called The ACT Crucible, designed to help people loosen the grip of distress, adapt to life's challenges, and enhance their relationships, and live more meaningful lives.
Relationship Therapist · Chicago & Online Throughout Illinois and Michigan
Therapy for the relationships that shape your life
I help individuals, couples, and families move beyond distress, improve connection, and create a life they love.
Explore topics
After discovering old messages, a wife learns her husband had an affair years ago and hid it. Can a marriage be repaired when one partner is only beginning to process the betrayal?
Five years into a relationship with a kind, reliable best friend, the excitement has faded — and a new spark with someone else raises the question: Is this it?
After nine years of marriage and a young child, a husband announces he wants to separate and refuses couples therapy. On facing a decision that belongs to one person, grieving the relationship, and moving through the transition.
Five years into the marriage, a husband wants to move back to his home country in the Middle East, but his wife has no desire to go. How can they navigate a decision where neither will be fully satisfied?
I love him, but his $60,000 in credit card debt has me questioning his judgment. Is this a sign we shouldn't get married, or can we work through it?
You can have a relationship with your mother even if she never fully acknowledges how she hurt you. But what kind of relationship can you have, and what will it require from you?
Work with me
I work with couples move beyond recurring conflict and emotional distance, and helping them rebuild trust, communication, and intimacy.
02I help individuals find what keeps them stuck and reconnect with what matters. For anxiety, trauma, depression, and relationship distress.
03I help in navigate parent–child conflict, adult family dynamics, estrangement, and cultural or generational differences.
04Trauma-focused therapy for PTSD, complex trauma, and interpersonal trauma using ACT, DBT, and Crucible Neurobiological Therapy.
05A structured, compassionate approach to facing fears, reducing avoidance, and reclaiming parts of life that anxiety has limited.
06I offer extended, focused sessions for couples and families in crisis or ready for accelerated growth.
Featured offering
A three-hour, focused session designed to move real ground on a specific issue in a single block of dedicated time. For couples in crisis, families navigating rupture, and partners ready to accelerate the work they're already doing.
Specialties
Although much of my work centers on relationships, people come to therapy for a wide range of concerns. I work with individuals, couples, and families across these areas.
Specialty service
Exposure therapy helps clients gradually and safely approach what fear has taught them to avoid. The process is collaborative, compassionate, individually paced, and never forced or rushed.
Gradual, structured support to regain confidence and freedom in travel.
Fear of judgment, rejection, public speaking, dating, and workplace interactions.
Relationship-related fears and patterns that keep connection at a distance.
Fear of physical sensations and the avoidance that panic often creates.
Reassurance-seeking cycles and worry about physical health and symptoms.
Focused, paced work toward the situations, objects, or experiences you avoid.
Difficult memories, situations, emotions, or conversations that narrow your life.
I integrate exposure-based approaches with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Crucible Neurobiological Therapy (CNT). The goal is to help clients tolerate discomfort, respond differently to fear, reduce avoidance, and reclaim meaningful parts of their lives.
You do not have to wait for anxiety to disappear before living more fully.
My approach
My approach centers on helping you understand your experience at a deeper level and develop core psychological skills to transform your life.
Read more about my approachACT
Psychological flexibility: staying present, open, and guided by your values.
DBT
Practical therapy for regulating emotions, tolerating distress, and creating a life worth living
Crucible
A method I developed that integrates ACT with Crucible Therapy: A pragmatic approach to build extraordinary relationships
Crucible Therapy
Building differentiation and intimacy: the capacity to stay connected to yourself while emotionally engaged with others.
CNT
Integrating neuroscience with differentiation to address how the brain and nervous system shape relational patterns and trauma responses.
Multicultural & Arabic-speaking therapy
I'm an Iraqi-American therapist who grew up in Chicago and have lived across Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. I offer therapy in Arabic, English, and some Spanglish.
My international experience shapes how I work with clients navigating family expectations, cultural identity, belonging, and intercultural relationships.
Why work with me
Therapy in Chicago & across Illinois and Michigan
I provide couples therapy, individual therapy, and family therapy in Chicago, with online sessions available to clients anywhere in Illinois and Michigan. As an LCSW, LMSW, ACT therapist, and DBT therapist serving Chicago, I work with relationship counseling, marriage counseling, trauma therapy, PTSD treatment, anxiety treatment, depression, and family counseling across a wide range of life situations.
Whether you're searching for a Chicago therapist, a couples counselor in Chicago, a family therapist, or a trauma therapist offering online therapy in Illinois and Michigan, the goal of the first conversation is to see whether you think we're a good fit.
Book a session
Therapy is a big investment in your life. I take this responsibility seriously, and I would be honored to be your fellow traveler on your journey to live more fully and meaningfully.
Book a session