Michele McShea, LCSW

Michele McShea is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 19 years of experience helping people through hard life moments. She offers straightforward support for anxiety, depression, relationship struggles, and issues tied to identity and self-worth. Michele helps clients build practical coping skills while also working toward deeper change.

She uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to look at how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors interact. Michele also draws on psychodynamic ideas to notice patterns that repeat across relationships. Hypnotherapy and solution-focused techniques are used when a client wants brief, targeted work on a specific problem.

Sessions are conversational and goal-oriented. Michele listens for what is most troubling now, then helps set small, achievable steps. She balances shorter-term strategies like coping tools with exploration of past experiences that shape current reactions.

People come to Michele for a range of concerns including stress, addictions, grief, trauma and issues around intimacy and communication. She also addresses family of origin problems, infidelity, body image, and related struggles such as guilt, shame, and loneliness.

Michele works with individuals, couples, and groups and accepts international clients for online sessions. She practices from Illinois and conducts therapy in English. Her approach aims to increase daily functioning while moving toward lasting personal growth.

Therapeutic approaches and online care

Michele commonly uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and psychodynamic ideas in her online practice. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy looks at how thoughts, feelings, and actions interact and helps people try small experiments to change difficult patterns. Psychodynamic approaches help identify repeated relationship and emotional patterns that developed over time, so those patterns can be noticed and shifted.

She may also use solution-focused strategies for brief, targeted work when a client wants clear goals and quick steps. Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. Michele will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what feels most useful, then tailor the mix of strategies over time.

Online therapy with Michele is offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to fit different needs. Video calls let you see facial cues and have fuller conversations. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to be on camera. Live chat and text-based messaging suit short check-ins, brief coaching, or people who prefer writing to speaking. These options aim to make regular therapy easier to fit into busy lives.