Michele Bonanno
Compassionate practical therapy for life challenges
- Credentials
- LMHC
- Experience
- 32 years
- Licensed in
- Florida
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Michele
Michele Bonanno is a licensed mental health counselor with 32 years of experience helping people cope with stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and parenting challenges. She also addresses concerns such as trauma and abuse, self-esteem, addictions, ADHD, relationship and intimacy issues, and life transitions. Michele works in Florida and offers services in English, including to international clients.
Her style is warm and straightforward. She listens first, then focuses on practical steps the client can try between sessions.
Background and approach
Michele blends established approaches to fit each person’s needs rather than using one fixed method. Sessions are meant to feel like a steady, problem-solving conversation. Over her career she has worked with a wide range of concerns, including caregiving stress, chronic illness, blended family issues, adoption and foster care questions, and body image struggles.
She also supports people facing career shifts, burnout, compassion fatigue, and commitment or attachment concerns. Michele brings long experience to complex, overlapping life problems. In therapy she uses tools drawn from cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, attachment-based methods, and client-centered work.
Those tools help with adjusting unhelpful thoughts, managing emotions, strengthening relationships, and clarifying values and goals. Michele aims to help clients find concrete ways to feel more steady day to day. Her credential is FL LMHC MH6519, which indicates licensure as a mental health counselor in Florida.
People who want to begin can expect a conversational intake and a focus on practical, doable changes tailored to their situation.
Therapeutic approaches for online care
Michele commonly uses cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy in her online work. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors to reduce symptoms like anxiety and depression. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) helps people clarify their values, accept difficult feelings, and take committed action toward what matters to them.She also draws on attachment-based ideas to help people understand relationship patterns and improve emotional connection. That approach can be useful when people want clearer boundaries, healthier closeness, or to repair trust over time.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. Michele collaborates with each person to choose methods based on their goals, preferences, and what feels most useful. She adapts techniques across sessions so the plan can change as progress is made.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. These options make it easier to fit sessions into busy schedules, continue work during life transitions, and use shorter check-ins when helpful. Michele uses these formats to keep therapy practical and consistent for people with varied needs.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Less about arguing with difficult thoughts, more about loosening their grip and acting on what matters to you anyway. Values and committed action carry the work, which suits conversation at a distance.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Looks at how early bonds shaped what you expect from closeness, and how that plays out now with a partner, a parent, or your own children.
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.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Gottman Method
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Systemic Therapy
- Experience
- 32 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Michele
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point