About Michael
Michael Hurd is a licensed clinical social worker with a direct, solution-focused way of working. He frames sessions around clear goals and practical steps. He aims to be a thinking partner who helps people move forward rather than just label problems.
He focuses on current struggles first, drawing on a person’s history only when it helps. Sessions look for strengths and past successes to build on. That approach is useful for stress, anxiety, addictions, relationship strain, and life transitions.
Background and approach
Over a long career Michael has written books and many articles about practical coping and mental health. He uses that experience to offer straightforward guidance and coaching in sessions. He avoids getting stuck on symptoms and instead targets self-defeating habits and patterns that hold people back.
His style blends client-centered listening with cognitive behavioral techniques and solution-focused planning. He also draws on Internal Family Systems ideas when it helps people understand conflicting parts of themselves. The focus is always on what works now to reduce distress and improve daily functioning.
People meet him to tackle sleep or eating problems, grief, trauma aftereffects, ADHD-related struggles, career pressure, or compassion fatigue. He supports work on intimacy, communication problems, self-esteem, and coping with chronic health issues. Conversations are collaborative, practical, and paced to the client’s needs.
How Michael’s Approaches Work Online
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and building on the client’s own goals and strengths. It’s about understanding what matters to the person and letting them lead the pace and topics. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, identifies unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns and replaces them with practical skills to reduce anxiety, manage sleep or eating problems, and address mood challenges.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist and client collaborate to choose which methods to try based on current needs, goals, and what feels most helpful. Sessions may shift approaches over time as progress is made and priorities change.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, which allow flexibility for different days and schedules. Video works well for in-depth conversations and visual cues, phone sessions can fit into a work break or require less bandwidth, and text or chat is useful for brief check-ins or when someone prefers not to be on camera. These options make it easier to keep continuity of care and to fit sessions into a busy life.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 36 years
- Licensed
- South Carolina, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, Virginia
- Languages
- English
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