Michele Petersmark

Michele Petersmark is an Illinois Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) with 20 years of experience. She helps people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, relationship struggles, depression, and life changes. Michele also works with concerns such as trauma and abuse, grief, parenting strain, and questions about life purpose.

Her approach centers on active listening and practical conversation. She uses client-centered methods to focus on what matters most to the individual. Michele also draws on cognitive behavioral strategies to identify unhelpful thinking patterns and DBT skills to manage intense emotions.

Sessions include moments of skill practice and short, focused problem solving. She may use mindfulness techniques to reduce reactivity and solution-focused ideas to set concrete next steps. The work is often concrete - noticing what isn’t working, trying a small change, and checking how it felt.

Michele has supported people with mood disorders, ADHD, panic, postpartum depression, and compassion fatigue across different life stages. She also addresses issues such as infidelity, abandonment, aging concerns, and fertility-related stress. Her experience includes both clinical concerns and coaching-style conversations about career and money.

People who feel stuck or unsure about what comes next can expect straightforward, conversational sessions. Michele asks about goals, suggests strategies from evidence-based approaches, and tracks progress over time. To begin, prospective clients complete a short matching questionnaire and schedule a first session.

How Michele’s approaches translate to online work

Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and responding to what the person brings. Online sessions allow Michele to follow concerns you raise and shape sessions around your priorities. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and uses simple exercises to test unhelpful thoughts; this is easy to do over video or phone with brief worksheets and in-session practice. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) provides concrete emotion-regulation and distress-tolerance skills that can be taught in short steps and rehearsed during online meetings.

Choosing an approach is part of the first few sessions. Michele will work together with the client to decide which combination of methods fits their goals and preferences. That means trying strategies, reviewing what helps, and adjusting the plan as needed rather than locking into one method at the start.

Session formats are not specified in the biography, so confirm current options before booking. In general, online appointments can make it easier to fit therapy into a workday, shorten the time spent commuting, or allow a quicker check-in when energy is low. Some people prefer phone check-ins for lower bandwidth or shorter conversations, while others use video to practice behavioral experiments and visible skill rehearsal. Discussing practical scheduling and format needs is a standard part of the first appointment.