About Michaela
Dr. Michaela Hammer is a licensed clinical social worker with 35 years of experience helping people navigate life transitions and emotional challenges. She focuses on common problems such as anxiety, depression, grief, relationship strain, and stress.
Her approach aims to separate myths from facts so clients can move forward with dignity and new goals. She uses straightforward conversation to understand what matters to each person. Sessions focus on practical steps for coping, improving relationships, and managing mood or attention concerns.
Background and approach
She offers memory and cognitive functioning assessments when changes in thinking or memory are a concern. Dr. Hammer draws on a mix of client-centered and evidence-based approaches to fit a person’s situation.
She watches for trauma and loss that underlie current struggles, and she works with clients to name what is happening and develop realistic next steps. Motivational and solution-focused techniques are used when people want short-term goals and clearer direction. She also provides grief counseling for losses that are sometimes overlooked, including the death of a pet.
Referrals for pet grief commonly come from veterinarians and medical providers. Dr. Hammer listens for the unique meaning of each loss and helps people find ways to honor it while rebuilding routine and purpose.
Her background includes clinic, home, school, retirement community, nursing home, and hospital settings. She has run memory clinics, taught about cultural awareness and aging, and performed routine depression and anxiety assessments. She combines long experience with steady support to help people live better lives.
Dr. Hammer practices in Florida and holds the credential Licensed Clinical Social Worker, LCSW, reflecting her clinical training and years in practice.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and understanding each person's experience. The therapist mirrors concerns, asks open questions, and helps people identify what they value and want to change. This is useful when someone needs steady support through transitions or loss.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors interact. It breaks problems into small, manageable steps and teaches practical skills for anxiety, depression, and stress. Clients often leave sessions with simple exercises to try between meetings.
Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and what has or hasn't helped before. That collaboration shapes a plan that may mix client-centered listening with CBT skills or short-term solution-focused tasks.
Online sessions can fit different rhythms of life. Video calls let the therapist and client see each other and use visual cues. Phone sessions work when bandwidth is low or when someone prefers not to use video. Live chat and text-based messaging are useful for brief check-ins, written reflections, or when people need flexible, on-the-go contact. These options help make therapy more accessible across schedules and locations.
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Relationship issues
- Grief
- Depression
Also listed
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed
- Florida, New Mexico
- Languages
- English
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