Michele Petersmark, LCPC

Michele Petersmark is an Illinois Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) with 20 years of professional experience. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship concerns. Michele aims to create a respectful and compassionate space and meets each person where they are.

She uses a tailored approach, adjusting conversations and strategies to fit each person's needs. Michele often draws on client-centered techniques to build trust and on cognitive behavioral methods to address unhelpful thoughts that feed anxiety and low mood. She also incorporates mindfulness and skills-based strategies from dialectical behavior therapy when emotion regulation is needed.

Michele works with practical life problems like sleep and eating difficulties, parenting stress, career concerns, and the strain of life transitions. She also supports people coping with grief, trauma and abuse, intimacy-related issues, and challenges such as ADHD and mood disorders. Aging and geriatric issues are included among her additional focus areas.

Her style is straightforward and collaborative: she listens first, then offers concrete steps and exercises you can try between sessions. Sessions include conversational therapy and skill practice aimed at real-life results. Michele encourages small changes that build momentum.

She offers services in English and accepts international clients. When someone is ready to begin, she asks them to complete a short matching questionnaire and schedule according to her availability.

How Michele’s approaches translate to online therapy

Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and responding to each person as an individual. Online sessions using this approach are conversational and aim to build trust while identifying what matters most to the client. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, targets the thoughts and behaviors that keep problems like anxiety and depression going, and it often includes homework exercises to practice new skills between sessions. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, emphasizes emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills, which can be taught in short, practical steps and practiced in daily life.

Choosing a therapeutic approach is a collaborative process. Michele works with each person to figure out which methods best fit their goals, needs, and preferences. She will adjust the plan over time based on what works and what does not, and she encourages trialing strategies to see real-world effects.

Session formats are not specified in the biography, so please confirm current options before booking. Online work can help fit therapy into busy schedules by reducing travel time and making it easier to schedule shorter check-ins or longer sessions around work or caregiving. It also makes it easier to practice skills between sessions in the settings where problems occur. Ask about format details when you complete the matching questionnaire so the sessions can be arranged to fit everyday life.