Dr. Michaela Hammer
Supporting families through life transitions
- Credentials
- LCSW
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed in
- Florida, New Mexico
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Michaela
Dr. Michaela Hammer uses a client-centered approach first, meeting people where they are and building on their strengths. She blends practical techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy and solution-focused methods to help people manage relationships, grief, parenting challenges, mood concerns, and life changes.
Her style is direct but warm, focusing on clear steps people can take between sessions. She has 35 years of experience and brings that perspective to each conversation.
Background and approach
She wants to separate myths from facts about aging, memory, mood, and neurodiversity. That means offering information, assessments when appropriate, and realistic options for coping. She provides memory loss and cognitive functioning assessments and discusses results in plain language.
She also offers counseling for pet grief and loss, acknowledging the real pain of losing a beloved animal. Michaela has worked in many settings including offices, homes, schools, retirement communities, nursing homes, and hospitals. Her practice has included setting up memory clinics and running depression and anxiety assessments.
She has provided in-service training on cultural awareness and aging issues. She has provided counseling to individuals, couples, and families across diverse racial, religious, socioeconomic, and educational backgrounds. Her perspective has been shaped by decades of clinical work and by personal experience with loss in her own family.
She aims to stay practical, compassionate, and respectful in helping people move forward. People who meet with her can expect straightforward conversation, information about relevant resources, and collaborative problem solving. Sessions emphasize goals the person identifies and steps to reach them.
Her hope is to help clients find renewed purpose, dignity, and realistic ways to cope.
Therapeutic approaches that guide online sessions
Client-centered therapy is about listening closely and shaping the work around each person's needs and values. It focuses on respect, empathy, and supporting clients to find their own solutions, which helps with relationship and life transition issues.Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts affect feelings and actions and teaches concrete skills to change unhelpful patterns. It is useful for anxiety, depression, stress, and many everyday problems by giving practical tools to use between sessions.
Solution-focused therapy narrows in on small, achievable changes and on what works now. It helps set short-term goals and builds momentum by identifying strengths and past successes that can be reused in new situations.
Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what feels most helpful, and then adjust methods over time to fit the client’s needs and pace.
Online therapy lets people connect from home or elsewhere using video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. These options make scheduling more flexible and let clients use the format that feels easiest for them, whether they prefer face-to-face video or shorter check-ins by message.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Motivational Interviewing
A way of working through mixed feelings about change without being pushed. The therapist helps you weigh things up and find your own reasons, which often makes a difficult decision feel less stuck.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Relationship issues
- Grief
- Depression
Also works with
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 35 years
- Licensed
- Florida, New Mexico
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Michaela
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point