Christopher Michael

Dr. Christopher Michael is a licensed psychologist in Claremont, CA. He works with people who put others too far ahead of themselves. Often, they struggle with: difficult and conflictual relationships, managing interpersonal boundaries, social anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and under-assertiveness. He is especially interested in helping highly sensitive persons (HSPs), creative types, and people in helping professions or activities.

As an overvirew, Dr. Michael is trained in psychoanalytic / psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and existential approaches to therapy and counseling. That means that he is interested in four things:

1. Cultivating a connected, grounded experience of being human (and safe) together

2. Helping you catch sight of and understand hidden or ignored, meaningful thoughts, feelings, motives, and actions

3. Understanding how your internal and external behavior started, why / how it is not working for you now, and how it can work better for you, and

4. Seeing how #2 and #3 relate to each other, and how they sometimes manifest right in the living therapy relationship.

Dr. Michael stays centered by keeping only one agenda in therapy: to truly understand you in a supportive and emotionally insightful way. That way, your self-understanding expands and deepens. Although it's sometimes in a surprising way, that expansion gives you more agency and freedom than you thought possible—even when the world is harsh.

Dr. Michael received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Tulsa in 2006, after completing an internship at Patton State Hospital. He has been in supervised or independent clinical practice since 2005, and California-licensed since 2008. When not working, you can find him at home enjoying cooking, his cats, spending time with family, and watching funny commentary shows or music reaction videos.