About Michelle
Michelle (Sheli) Miller uses a client-centered approach to guide people through stress, anxiety, grief, and life transitions. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker - LCSW with eighteen years of experience working in California. Sheli writes plainly and listens closely to help people name problems and decide on next steps.
Sheli draws on cognitive behavioral and dialectical behavior therapy tools to help people change unhelpful thoughts and build steady coping skills.
Background and approach
She also uses mindfulness and motivational interviewing to support motivation and present-moment awareness. Sessions often focus on practical steps that can be tried between meetings. Her background includes work in hospitals, domestic violence centers, community agencies, and independent practice.
That range of settings shaped a focus on helping people manage relationships, addiction concerns, parenting strain, compassion fatigue, and career stress. Sheli also helps with intimacy issues, sleep problems, and grief through loss or end-of-life caregiving. Sheli values learning from each person’s story and meeting them where they are.
She pays attention to cultural and religious context and tailors tools to fit daily life. The goal is clearer self-understanding and small, doable changes that make life feel more manageable. People meet her for short-term coaching-style work or longer therapy focused on deeper change.
Her style is respectful, active, and nonjudgmental, with a focus on building strengths and practical coping skills that fit each person’s goals.
Therapeutic Approaches Adapted for Online Care
Michelle uses client-centered work to ground the online relationship. That means the conversation starts with what matters most to the person and the therapist follows their lead to set goals and pace. This approach helps with broad concerns like relationship strain, grief, and coping with life changes.She also draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to identify unhelpful thoughts and test new behaviors. CBT is useful for anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and managing day-to-day stress. Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills are used to teach emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and improved communication for intense feelings or relationship conflicts.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. She will collaborate with each person to decide whether client-centered support, CBT, DBT skills, or a mix fits best based on goals and preferences. That collaborative process helps tailor strategies that can be practiced between sessions.
Online sessions are offered by video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to increase flexibility. Video calls let people work face-to-face from wherever is convenient. Phone sessions can be a lower-bandwidth option or fit a short break during a busy day. Live chat and text-based messaging are useful for quick check-ins, ongoing coaching, and for people who prefer writing to talking.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Blended family issues
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 18 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English