Christopher Michael (he/his)

This perspective has to do with how you manage conflicts between desires and fears, how the resulting anxiety emerges, and how you cope with that. I have a one-year certificate in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. I borrow from several analytic traditions. After all, this perspective has been developing and expanding for decades, and many approaches in therapy owe it a debt.

My approaches are supported by an existential foundation. The existential approach primarily has to do with understanding and empathizing with your efforts to manage the responsibility and anxiety of making choices and finding meaning in life. Our ability to 'think about' and choose (rather than just react) is a great gift, but also anxiety-provoking.

CBT focused on getting you thinking, perceiving, assuming, and acting differently by collaborative inquiry and experiential work you do in session or in between sessions. I have much short-term therapy experience using a CBT framework and also a significant continuing education and graduate school background in this area.

CBT is focused on getting you thinking, perceiving, assuming, and acting differently. We use collaborative inquiry, as well as experiential work in session or in between sessions. I have much short-term therapy experience using a CBT framework and also significant continuing education and graduate school background in this area.

Burnout is when you feel you are giving your all (or are running out of it) but can't keep going, with a feeling of low accomplishment, pointlessness, or failure. It is more than just complaining. If severe and not moderated early, it can cause loss / abandonment of the activity or job. Sometimes that is best, but often it is best to slow down and make more deliberate decisions, rather than reactive ones.

I usually refer to this as some combination of people-pleasing, poor boundaries, low assertiveness, or a 'toxic' / high-conflict relationship you can't let go of / get out of. As a general summary only, codependency is when one or both people in a relationship have low self-esteem (or inflated, defensively high self-esteem) and, because of that, one or both people develop an unhealthily strong attachment to, or need for approval from, the other.

Burnout is not just tiredness. It is when an activity, job, or relationship has been such a strain that your enthusiasm and energy feel gone and impossible to get back. In burnout, you become cynical, detached, unmotivated, less productive, and hopeless or helpless-feeling.

Even problems not called an 'anxiety disorder' usually contain an element of anxiety. Problems tend to improve when that anxiety is discovered, understood, respected, and properly and gently countered. Also, I work specifically with social anxiety, which can be sub-clinical ('shyness', self-doubt), or can be a diagnosis. I have experience with other anxiety and related disorders, and with how high emotional, sensory, and intellectual sensitivity sometimes contributes.

Even problems not called an 'anxiety disorder' usually contain an element of anxiety. Problems tend to improve when that anxiety is discovered, understood, respected, and properly and gently countered. Also, I work specifically with social anxiety, which can be sub-clinical ('shyness', self-doubt), or can be a diagnosis. I have experience with other anxiety and related disorders, and with how high emotional, sensory, and intellectual sensitivity sometimes contributes.

I usually refer to this as some combination of people-pleasing, poor boundaries, low assertiveness, or a 'toxic' / high-conflict relationship you can't let go of / get out of. As a general summary only, codependency is when one or both people in a relationship have low self-esteem (or inflated, defensively high self-esteem) and, because of that, one or both people develop an unhealthily strong attachment to, or need for approval from, the other.