About
About Michele and Tom
Michele
enjoys connecting with people in ways that support an increased sense
of aliveness and groundedness. Her approach is relational, experiential and
body-oriented. Her areas of training and experience include working
with the complex and debilitating impact of trauma and loss, anxiety,
depression, and body-focused conditions. Michele draws from a
variety of body-oriented modalities in her work, including mindfulness
practices, focusing, and EMDR.
Michele appreciates working with the challenges we all face when moving
from one phase of life to another, such as leaving home, going to
school, leaving a job, changing relationships, and facing the unknown.
Michele has worked extensively with children and families dealing with
loss, including separation and divorce. She is particularly interested
in how our personal pain, past and present, intersects with our
cultural background. She is also curious about how culture influences
self-worth and self-acceptance and how the experience of shame and
guilt relates to how we live in our bodies, make choices, and structure
our lives.
Michele's commitment to her educational training and development as an
LMFT has evolved out of her sustained, personal interest in nonviolence—psychologically, physically, and culturally. Starting in 1990, Michele, as a self-defense teacher (SLO Model Mugging), worked with over a thousand individuals, including children, in
San Luis Obispo county, to learn how to assess potentially dangerous
situations, embody verbal and physical deescalation skills, and
practice full-force, adrenaline-state defensive skills for
life-threatening situations. Michele is continually amazed how much
more open and trusting people become when they have the skills to
protect themselves. Michele’s work as a body-oriented psychotherapist continues to be
influenced by her study of Aikido, a martial art, also called the "art
of peace" which she started practicing in 1990 and continues today. Since 2003 Michele’s work has also been informed by her study of
Nonviolent Communication (also called Compassionate Communication), founded by, Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.d., which provides a powerful means to be more effective in how we listen
and how we talk to ourselves and others.
Michele has lived in the Central Coast since 1982. She has an M.S.
Degree in Clinical Psychology from Cal Poly State University. As an
undergraduate she studied history and philosophy, with a particular
interest in the origins and history of parenting practices in Europe
and the United States. Prior
to her work as a psychotherapist, Michele cooked and served meals for
the homeless and lead peer support groups for rape survivors, and taught self-defense classes. She also
worked as an on-call crisis worker where she helped women relocate to
the local women's shelter.
As a psychotherapist, Michele has worked in a variety of agency settings in SLO county including in-home counseling (Parent Support Group, Department of Social Services) and elementary school counseling (SLO County Mental Health). Currently, besides private practice, Michele works in a local residential treatment program for youth (Transitions-Mental Health Association) as well as co-facilitates "Teen's Together" (Director, Lynn Manzella, LMFT) — experiential groups for teen girls on probation referred through Juvenile Services. Since 1994 Michele has been a member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) and served as a board member on the Central Coast Chapter of CAMFT from 2000 to 2004. Michele works with compassion and respect; she maintains a diligent sensitivity to ethnic and religious differences, sexual orientation, and gender diversity. Michele enjoys working with couples, families, groups, and individuals of all ages. Michele's email is michele@michelesimone.com.