About Michelle
Michelle Laughlin is a licensed clinical social worker in California who helps people manage stress and anxiety. She works with adults facing trauma, abuse, low self-esteem, and difficulty adjusting to life changes. Michelle focuses on practical steps to improve day-to-day coping and concentration.
With four years of professional experience, she tailors conversations and plans to each person’s needs. Sessions aim to build confidence, strengthen motivation, and address memory or focus problems that get in the way of daily life.
Background and approach
She brings calm, respect, and a sensitive approach to each meeting. Therapy often includes clear strategies to reduce worry and manage upsetting memories. Michelle uses methods that encourage understanding of attachment patterns and skills to change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors.
She also draws on solution-focused techniques to set short-term goals and DBT-informed tools for emotional regulation. People who seek her help may be coping with abandonment, attachment issues, blended family stress, or communication and control struggles. Additional areas she addresses include dissociation, domestic violence, first responder stress, and forgiveness work.
Michelle will listen first and then work with each person to create a practical plan. Her style is collaborative and straightforward. She aims to make therapy feel doable for someone on a phone screen or a brief break.
Taking a first step can feel hard, and she offers steady support while people work toward clearer routines and less daily overwhelm.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Michelle often uses Attachment-Based Therapy to help people understand patterns in their relationships and how those patterns affect anxiety and trust. This approach looks at how early connections shape reactions and aims to build more supported ways of relating. She also uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which focuses on spotting and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors that keep anxiety and stress going. CBT helps with practical skills like planning, thinking shifts, and gradual exposure to feared situations. Dialectical Behavior Therapy techniques are woven in when emotional regulation and distress tolerance are needed, offering concrete skills for managing strong feelings and improving coping.Finding the right combination of approaches is part of the work. Michelle collaborates with each person to decide which methods fit their goals and preferences. She starts by listening to current struggles and then suggests a path that includes short-term goals, skill practice, and regular check-ins so adjustments can be made together.
Online therapy formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video lets people see visual cues and have deeper conversations. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to use video. Live chat and messaging are useful for brief check-ins, skill reminders, or jotting down thoughts between longer sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and keep momentum between meetings.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Co-morbidity
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Dissociation
- Domestic violence
- Emptiness
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 4 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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