About Michelle
Michelle Winkel is a California licensed marriage and family therapist with 25 years of experience. She helps people who are feeling stressed or anxious, those facing relationship or intimacy concerns, and people navigating LGBT issues or major life changes. She creates a calm setting where clients can talk honestly about what matters to them.
Her work focuses on practical conversations and steady support. Sessions are a place to sort through worries, try new ways of responding, and set realistic steps forward.
Background and approach
She listens for patterns in relationships and daily life that keep problems stuck, and helps people change them one step at a time. Michelle has a long career helping adults through transitions like caregiving, chronic illness, grief, and aging concerns.
She also addresses eating and body image struggles, attachment and family of origin issues, and stresses tied to gender identity or HIV/AIDS when these come up in therapy. In sessions she uses evidence-based therapeutic techniques and adapts them to each person’s needs. Meetings may include talk-based problem solving, building coping skills, and practical communication work.
The focus is on small, manageable changes that fit into daily life. She offers therapy in English and provides video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. People start by completing a short matching questionnaire and scheduling sessions according to her availability.
How evidence-based approaches work online
Michelle uses evidence-based therapeutic techniques that focus on clear, practical work people can use between sessions. One common approach emphasizes skill-building for anxiety and stress - learning breathing and attention strategies, practicing gradual exposure to feared situations, and developing steady routines that lower daily tension. This helps people feel more in control of everyday worry.Another approach centers on communication and attachment patterns in relationships. Sessions examine how people give and ask for support, then practice new ways to speak and listen so connections feel safer and clearer. This can be useful for intimacy concerns and recurring conflicts.
Finding the right approach is part of the process. Michelle works collaboratively to identify what fits a person’s goals and preferences, and adjusts methods over time based on what helps. Clients and therapist set small goals and review progress together to shape ongoing work.
Online therapy options include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is good for face-to-face conversation and visual cues, phone calls use less bandwidth and can fit a busy schedule, live chat offers a shorter check-in without speaking, and messaging lets people share thoughts between sessions. These formats make it easier to get consistent help while balancing work, caregiving, or health needs.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also listed
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Body image
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Gender dysphoria
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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