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About Counseling and Coaching
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Been through counseling but felt misunderstood? Seen lots of nice people but little relief?
I’ve been where you are. I get it.
You’re not a label. You’re not a set of issues. You need something different than nice reframes or worksheets to help you challenge your thinking. You want to be understood. That’s a deep yearning that drives all of us. I used to assume that all counselors provided a place of understanding, a place to explore deeply my thoughts, my feelings, my place in this world. I yearned for connection and welcome. What I got was too often different. A blank stare. A question about just how high my IQ was, a furrowed brow, a request to simplify. A confusion at my desire to know what was going on in the counselor’s mind and heart — apparently, these things were none of my business. But I didn’t know how to interact with a person that was basically nonexistent in the room with me. I didn’t know how to be myself in a rigid framework where counselors tried to sort my communications into categories, to put me into a box. I didn’t know how to deal with it that I could tell when my counselor was struggling himself — and often, my counselors didn’t either. Not until I found someone affirming who believed that being deeply human could also be deeply healing. Not until I found someone who looked past categories and listened and resonated with the communication of my nonverbals and my body.
I found relief there. Such profound relief, in fact, that I immediately sought training in the same approaches this guy was using.
I’m also informed by the work I did with kids, the kinda kids that didn’t express themselves in neat, linear ways, the kids who didn’t fit into boxes. Often, these kids were gifted and sensitive. Often they were grieving in a language those around them didn’t understand. Often, amidst the silence or the “behavioral issues” were a cry for connection. Often, I could hear that cry and help those kids find delight, connection, their voices. I helped the adults around them to get it. And now, I want to help the places in you that feel confused or that come out in “issues” to find delight, connection, a voice.
I facilitate connection. To yourself, to your inner voice, to the world, to others.
Clients describe my style as interactive, dynamic, and engaged. And deeply welcoming, welcoming so much that clients dare to share things they’ve never dared speak aloud to anyone before. Sometimes to speak the things they’ve never dared tell themselves.
So expect lots of welcome here. Expect me to delight in aspects of who you are that you’ve regarded as “strange” or “not right.” Expect laughter, expect freedom to feel your feelings, and expect that I won’t stare at you as if you’re some kinda thing I’m studying.
I’ll be right here with you.
I won’t ask you to drop your thinking brain and “just feel,” but I’ll help you feel honored in your smarts and your emotions. I’ll help you to both think and feel. We’ll ponder together, we’ll laugh, and we’ll explore what makes you deeply you.
Some say there’s a kindness they feel in my voice and my eyes that stays with them during the week…
… or that moments of gentle play and laughter help lift them out of their distress.
So if you’re tired of feeling stranded, unable to find yourself or your voice, come on in. We’ll find it together.
Schedule below to set up a 30-min consultation.
Schedule your appointment with me online today.
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More About Me
In high school, kids joked that it was “pointless to have a school counselor – everyone just sees Michaela.”
When people ask how I got into this job, I say it wasn’t a decision so much as something that kept happening. Wherever I worked, whatever I did, I helped people to connect.
One time I was in a checkout line at a grocery store helping a clearly distressed woman with something grocery-related, and she burst into tears and began telling me her story.
As we parted ways and said awkward goodbyes, I realized, “This listening and all these people opening up is great — but I have to find a way to do something more, to make this safer, to help this actually make a change for the person.
So I made it my work to find out how to help people express their emotions in ways that helped things to change.
I also made it my work to learn to be a different kind of counselor from the ones I’d met. So I could help people who had trauma, like I did, that wasn’t easily expressed with just words. And so I could help people with sensitivity like mine — people who needed to feel someone truly there with them.
I didn’t want to learn to ask, “How does that make you feel?”
I didn’t want to label people or put their feelings and thoughts into boxes.
I didn’t want to just help people vent — but feel no better for it.
I wanted to help people feel deeply heard in ways that helped them deeply transform.
I want to help people find something more than just validation for their insight and to come away with something more personal and profound than can be found on the local self-help shelf.
That’s why I don’t give answers; I facilitate connection and a new experience for clients.
When I’m not helping people connect
In my spare time, I hike with my partner, play with our two kitties, sing in choir (I try to learn most every part because I love hearing how the parts all connect….) as well as singing along with soulful music in my car. I read books, lots of them. And I see musicals, theater, concerts.
I also am a collector of funny quotes, road signs, and pieces of unexpected unintended humor. In fact, probably some pithy line will pop up in one of our sessions. Because sometimes a good one-liner is worth a million carefully measured insights. One time, a client was insisting she was a terrible person, and I quipped one of the one-liners I’d happened upon, “If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.”
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