About Michelle
Michelle Lakefield is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) practicing in New Jersey with over 20 years of experience. She helps people who are struggling with stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and relationship concerns. Michelle aims to make the first step into therapy easier with a calm, nonjudgmental approach.
She creates a space where people can speak openly about their thoughts and feelings. Sessions focus on practical steps that can be used between meetings.
Background and approach
She uses clear language and simple tools so progress feels real and doable. Michelle blends a few different ways of working to match what each person needs. She draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to identify unhelpful thinking patterns and Client-Centered Therapy to keep the conversation grounded in the client's own goals.
She also uses Solution-Focused ideas to set short-term goals and Internal Family Systems concepts to look at different parts of a person’s inner life. Over two decades, Michelle has supported people with a wide range of concerns such as trauma and abuse, intimacy issues, eating challenges, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and compassion fatigue.
She also helps with parenting strain, blended family issues, caregiver stress, communication problems, and healing from family-of-origin wounds. Her practice is conversational and goal-oriented. The focus is on understanding what matters most to the client, trying small changes, and tracking what works.
People who want practical tools and a steady listener may find her style a good fit.
How Michelle’s Approaches Work Online
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and following the client’s lead. It helps people feel heard and decide which goals matter most to them. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions; it offers concrete skills to reduce anxiety, manage mood, and change unhelpful patterns.Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. Michelle will collaborate with each person to figure out what methods match their goals, preferences, and current challenges. The plan can shift as needs change, combining listening with practical skill-building when that fits best.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video lets people use visual cues and a fuller conversation. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a quicker check-in is needed. Live chat and text messaging can support short updates, mood check-ins, or interim coaching between longer sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives and to keep progress moving forward.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Parenting issues
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- New Jersey
- Languages
- English