About Michele
Michele Petersmark uses a client-centered approach to guide conversations and make therapy feel useful and respectful. She is an Illinois licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC) with 20 years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship challenges. Michele keeps language plain and focuses on practical steps rather than clinical jargon.
She aims to make the first sessions clear so people know what to expect and can take the next step.
How Michele works
In sessions she listens first and adapts the plan to each person's situation. Michele blends cognitive behavioral techniques to spot unhelpful thoughts and DBT skills to manage strong emotions and impulses. She adds mindfulness practices to reduce reactivity and solution-focused work to set small, achievable goals.
Together this mix helps with mood shifts, panic, and confidence-building. She also addresses concerns related to trauma, grief, eating and sleeping issues, parenting stresses, and career or money worries. Additional areas of focus include abandonment, infertility-related stress, and compassion fatigue.
Michele aims to help people clarify priorities and rebuild a sense of control after major life changes. Michele works with adults across a range of mood and personality challenges, including bipolar and other mood disorders. Her approach is collaborative: she helps people try new skills, notice what works, and adjust plans over time.
The goal is steady progress and clearer next steps. People who choose Michele can expect straightforward conversation, practical tools, and a focus on what matters now. She encourages taking small steps and celebrates progress along the way.
Michele lists 5 ways of working on the entry:
What Michele works with
The areas below are the ones Michele selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Training and background
| Register | LCPC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 20 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Illinois |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
How Michele’s Approaches Translate to Online Care
Michele integrates cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness techniques to help people manage difficult thoughts and steady their reactions. CBT focuses on identifying and shifting unhelpful thinking patterns, which can reduce anxiety and depressive symptoms. Mindfulness therapy trains simple attention and breathing skills to lower reactivity and improve sleep and emotional regulation.Finding the right approach is part of the work together. Michele will talk with each person about their goals, preferences, and day-to-day life and then recommend strategies to try. She treats the process as collaborative, adjusting techniques over time based on what helps most.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video calls are useful for face-to-face conversation and learning new skills, phone sessions can fit into a busy schedule or require less bandwidth, and chat or messaging work well for brief check-ins and ongoing encouragement. These options make it easier to keep continuity of care and practice skills between sessions.
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Common questions
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A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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