About Michael
Michael Southerland greets people who are feeling stuck, anxious, or uncertain about relationships and intimacy. He focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and LGBTQ-related concerns.
Background and approach
Michael believes people bring strengths and knowledge about their own lives, and he helps them use those strengths to move forward. Michael is a licensed marriage and family therapist, LMFT, practicing in California with 12 years of experience.
He centers sessions on what matters most to each person and keeps the work practical. Conversations tend to focus on problems that show up in everyday living and relationships rather than on labels.
He uses clear, collaborative methods to help people notice patterns and try small changes. That can include looking at unhelpful thoughts, testing new ways of interacting, or telling the story of a problem in a different way.
Sessions are paced to match each person's needs and goals. Michael has helped people facing many concerns beyond the core issues above.
These include attachment and abandonment themes, body image struggles, addiction and co-morbidity, eating and food-related issues, and questions around commitment and codependency. He also supports clients navigating adoption and foster care questions, aging issues, autism and Asperger syndrome, and alternative sexual cultures such as BDSM and kink.
People meet with him for focused, goal-oriented work or for deeper exploration about meaning and identity. He offers phone, video, live chat, and text-based messaging sessions so people can choose the format that fits their life.
How his approaches work online
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening, acceptance, and helping people find their own solutions; it is useful when someone needs a space to make sense of feelings and values. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at thoughts and behaviors that keep problems going and offers clear exercises to test new ways of thinking and acting; it is often helpful for anxiety, stress, and depression. Narrative Therapy invites people to tell and reshape the stories they live by, which can free them from limiting roles and open new possibilities.Choosing the right approach is part of the work. Michael will discuss goals, preferences, and how each method might fit. Together the client and therapist decide which techniques to try and adjust the plan as needed in later sessions.
Online therapy options include live video, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video lets people use visual cues and a fuller conversational flow, phone can work when bandwidth is limited, live chat is useful for shorter check-ins, and messaging supports ongoing reflection between sessions. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and to keep continuity when schedules change.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Body image
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Depression
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Narcissism
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Postpartum depression
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English