About Michael
Michael Valdes is a licensed clinical social worker who helps people coping with anxiety and stress. He works with individuals facing depression, addiction, relationship strain, grief, and identity concerns. His style is straightforward and focused on practical steps someone can use day to day.
Michael brings 17 years of experience in mental health care in Tennessee. He uses a mix of approaches so sessions are shaped to the person in front of him.
Background and approach
People can expect conversational sessions that combine skills practice and personal reflection. He often draws on cognitive behavioral tools to spot unhelpful thoughts and rebuild routines. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is used to clarify values and take small, meaningful actions.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy offers skills for managing strong emotions when things feel overwhelming. Michael also uses client-centered and existential ideas to create space for honest conversation about meaning, loss, and life transitions. He addresses a wide range of concerns including trauma, ADHD, intimacy questions, and workplace or caregiving strain.
Sessions can include short-term coaching goals or longer therapy work depending on what a person needs. Michael aims to help people find workable strategies, rebuild trust in themselves, and take steady steps toward feeling better.
Therapeutic approaches online and how they help
Michael regularly uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in online sessions. ACT helps people notice what matters to them and take small actions toward those values, which can be useful for anxiety, grief, and life changes. CBT focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing them against real-life evidence to reduce symptoms like worry and low mood.He also draws on Dialectical Behavior Therapy when someone needs concrete emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills. DBT skills can help with intense emotions, relationship reactivity, and managing urges related to addiction or self-harm. Choosing the right mix is a collaborative process - the therapist will talk through goals, preferences, and what feels most helpful for each person.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video lets people work face to face when that helps, while phone calls can be easier when bandwidth is limited or a quick check-in is needed. Live chat and messaging support shorter check-ins, written skill practice, and ongoing coaching between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and try different ways of working to find what works best.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Addictions
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 17 years
- Licensed
- Tennessee
- Languages
- English
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