Michelle Freeman Counseling

Licensed Professional Counselor in Charlottesville, VA

Approach to Counseling

Michelle’s focus in therapy is to create a safe space with you that fosters restoration and resilience. To meet you in the stuck, painful places with kindness and non-judgement and help you access your strengths and resiliency in such a way that you find the relief of healing and hope. She specializes and focuses on issues ranging from anxiety and depression, stress and relationship conflict, trauma, emerging adulthood, attachment-focused issues, women’s issues, sexuality and gender-identity. She also offers faith-focused counseling at client’s request.

Michelle offers individual counseling for adults, college students, and adolescents 16 and above.

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Trauma and Attachment Informed

I spent seven years working at the Ainsworth Attachment Clinic working both as a Circle of Security Family therapist and as a Lead Evaluator in the clinic’s attachment evaluations. I also hold certification with the Green Cross as a traumatologist and an extra graduate certificate in Family work. All credentials to simply say I understand that the families we love are complicated and sometimes we carry pain from them needs processing. Not only do I know the research behind Attachment Theory but I know and have extensively worked with its emotional impact in our lives. The Attachment we form with caregivers when we are little has a huge impact on how we view ourselves as adults in the world today. And it certainly shapes the level of health we find our in our current adult attachments with romantic partners and close friends. It is worth taking the time to sort through those early patterns so that we can approach our adult lives unencumbered and able to move in emotionally healthy relationships.

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My very specific interest in therapy is helping clients unpack wounds from trauma, particularly if those wounds come from attachment figures in key relationships (like our parents, caregiver, romantic partners, close friends etc). Maybe you find yourself in relationship patterns that are confusing and you find yourself repeating behavior that keeps getting you stuck. Or perhaps you are in the process of figure out boundaries with people you care about it and its complicated. Or you catch yourself repeating things you saw in your own family growing up that you swear you would never do. Or maybe you’ve remembered and are ready to process specific abuse from your family of origin. Many times these wounds are so confusing because we learned them early on in our childhood. What helped us survive and thrive in our family when we are little no longer fits our adult life but we don’t know how else to be. If you find yourself stuck like this, I would love to come alongside you.
If you happen to be in the life phase of emerging adulthood, that transition around ages 18-30 where you are leaving your childhood home and stepping into your adult life, then this is key work for you. During this time whether you are in college, or the work force or still just figuring it out, is a key time of brain development and attachment pattern solidification. Its an opportune moment to look at the family dynamics you came from, the role you might have played in the family and any current impact that moments of pain within that family might be having on you. You get to decide what you want to carry forward and what you want to heal from. You have a chance to break old family patterns and create the life of health that you want. If you are in this particular life-phase, I would be honored to help you face it.

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Emotionally Focused

Broadly my main therapeutic focus is helping clients understand the feelings that shape their inner experience, feel less alone in those moments and grow in resilience to tolerate any distress those feelings brought. Sometimes life throws us scenarios that elicit big feelings like anger, grief, shame and we don’t know what to do with those feelings. So we push them down deep, avoid them with distraction and business, numb them with substances or fret about them spinning up into anxiety spirals.

The approach I use in therapy is called an research-based practice called AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Processing), which is to say in therapy I strive to create a safe space for you to look at big feelings and unpack them in a useful, contained way such that you can make sense of them and move forward. I help you connect how your body holds emotions with how your brain understand them. The goal of our work is for you to feel accompanied in heavy and hard spaces so that you find freedom and healing that lasts.

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Christian Focused

Sometimes clients are looking for a therapist that will understand the faith-background they come from or resonate with the current faith that guides their life. Sometimes I have clients who really want to incorporate scripture and prayer into our time together, I can hold that space with you. Othertimes I have clients who have been very wounded by church and faith-spaces and find it valuable to work with a therapist who can understand that specific culture. I look to Jesus as the model of love and that shapes my work as a therapist.

The benefit of a working with a therapist that shares your faith is that I can ask specific questions and enter into faith nuances with you. I bring faith into the therapy space based on what you specifically are looking for.

I utilize my training in researched-based methods from psychology and neuroscience and Scripture to create an space that is transformative, scientifically demonstrated and Biblically supported. I believe this kind of space brings about transformation that doesn’t just treat symptoms but brings full and lasting healing.

It’s my delight to walk alongside YOUR story.

Contact Michelle