Rell Spickerman
Experienced counselor and pastoral guide
- Credentials
- LMSW
- Experience
- 40 years
- Licensed in
- Michigan
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Rell
Rell Spickerman is a licensed master social worker with four decades of experience in counseling and pastoral care. He combines years of clinical work with time spent as a parish pastor and hospice chaplain. He writes and talks plainly, and aims to help people find practical solutions to real problems.
Spickerman focuses on a wide range of concerns including grief, relationship strain, depression, anxiety, addiction, and family issues. He has a long history supporting LGBT concerns and specifically mentions a personal connection through his transgender grandson.
Background and approach
His background includes bereavement support from hospice work and experience guiding parenting decisions during divorce mediation. In sessions he works as a guide rather than an authority. He draws on cognitive behavioral methods and client-centered listening to help people test new ways of thinking and acting.
He also uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and solution-focused steps when clients want concrete, short-term goals. He brings a straightforward, often humorous style to ease resistance to change. He says he values unconditional positive regard and listens without judgment.
Practical career and life-work planning are part of his toolbox for clients who want to make concrete life changes. Spickerman notes modest experience with Ericksonian hypnotherapy and healing storytelling, and he blends theory with everyday practice. His approach aims to affirm growth, support risk-taking, and help people move toward a clearer sense of purpose and self-direction.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice painful thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, then choose actions that match their values. It is useful for anxiety, depression, and coping with life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying and testing unhelpful thoughts and building new behaviors through practice; it often helps with anxiety, depression, anger, and stress. Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes listening, empathy, and unconditional positive regard to create a safe space where people can explore goals and make changes at their own pace.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to try methods that fit their needs and goals, and adjust the plan over time. Clients and therapist decide together whether a short solution-focused path or a deeper narrative of life events best suits the issue at hand.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to meet those aims. Video calls let people work face-to-face from home, phone sessions suit those who prefer voice-only interaction, and live chat or text messaging provide brief, ongoing support between meetings. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent around work, caregiving, and travel while using the therapeutic tools described above.
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.
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.
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Specialties and expertise
Also works with
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 40 years
- Licensed
- Michigan
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Rell
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point