About Michelle
Michelle Smith is a licensed mental health counselor who focuses on helping people adjust when life feels off balance. She brings ten years of experience in mental health to conversations about stress, anxiety, grief, and self-esteem. Michelle offers calm, practical guidance for people facing big changes and persistent worries.
She uses somatic work alongside acceptance and commitment principles to help people notice how stress shows up in the body and make changes that fit their values.
Background and approach
Cognitive behavioral tools are used to spot unhelpful thoughts and build new coping habits. Attachment-informed ideas help when past relationship patterns affect current connections. Michelle aims for short, clear steps clients can try between sessions.
She centers the person’s goals and adapts techniques to suit individual needs. Sessions focus on what is happening now and what can change next. Her scope covers many concerns, including trauma and abuse, intimacy-related issues, eating and sleeping problems, parenting stress, career strain, ADHD, depression, bipolar concerns, and compassion fatigue.
She also works with issues like abandonment, attachment struggles, body image, chronic pain and caregiver stress. Michelle holds LCMHC and LMHC licenses and practices with sensitivity to diverse backgrounds and identities. Sessions are offered in English and can be arranged for clients living outside the United States.
To begin, people complete a short matching questionnaire and schedule a session that fits their needs.
How somatic and values-based approaches work online
Somatic work helps people pay attention to bodily signals like tension, breath, or aching places, and use simple movement or breathing to reduce distress. It often helps when emotions feel stuck or show up as physical symptoms. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, focuses on what matters most to a person and on taking small committed actions toward those values while learning to accept difficult feelings.Finding the right mix of methods is part of the therapy process. Michelle will collaborate with each person to decide whether somatic exercises, ACT tools, or cognitive strategies fit their goals and preferences. This is a team process where plans adapt as progress is made.
Online sessions can take place by video calls, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging, which makes it easier to fit therapy into busy lives. These formats support steady work on skills, allow sharing brief check-ins between meetings, and let people practice grounding or breathing exercises in their own space. The aim is to combine practical approaches with flexible ways to connect so therapy fits real life.
Frequently asked questions
What problems does Michelle commonly help with?
What is her therapy style like?
How much experience does she have?
What credentials and where is she licensed?
Which languages are supported for sessions?
Can people outside the United States work together?
What formats are used for sessions?
How does cost and scheduling work?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Grief
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Existential Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method
- Hypnotherapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Florida, Oklahoma, Oregon, New Hampshire
- Languages
- English