Michael Cole, Psychotherapist
Therapy for Adults and Couples Seeking Lasting Change
You may find yourself struggling with anxiety, feeling stuck in recurring relationship patterns, questioning the direction of your life, or facing challenges that seem to return despite your best efforts to address them.
Therapy provides an opportunity to better understand yourself, your relationships, and the emotional patterns that shape your experiences. Through greater understanding, meaningful and lasting change becomes possible.
Who Is Therapy For?
Hi, I'm Michael, I provide individual and couples therapy in Rockridge, Oakland and throughout California via Telehealth sessions. My approach is warm, collaborative, and grounded in the belief that healing occurs through self-understanding, authentic connection, and the exploration of experiences that may be operating outside of awareness.
I work with adults and couples facing concerns such as relationship difficulties, depression, anxiety, life transitions, commitment concerns, infidelity, compulsive sexual behaviors, and questions of identity, purpose, and meaning. Together, we can explore what is keeping you stuck and develop a deeper understanding of the patterns shaping your life and relationships.
Drawing from relational psychodynamic therapy, attachment theory, and Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples, I help clients move toward greater emotional freedom, healthier relationships, and a more fulfilling life
Why Do the Same Problems Keep Returning?
Many people seek therapy because they feel trapped in patterns they cannot fully explain.
You may find yourself drawn to the same kinds of relationships, struggling with the same conflicts, or facing familiar feelings of anxiety, self-doubt, or dissatisfaction.
These patterns often develop for understandable reasons and can operate outside of awareness. Therapy provides an opportunity to explore them with curiosity rather than judgment, creating new possibilities for how you relate to yourself and others.
You may feel stuck in recurring relationship patterns, overwhelmed by anxiety, uncertain about major life decisions, or frustrated by problems that seem to repeat despite your best efforts.
Therapy can help you better understand yourself, your relationships, and the emotional patterns shaping your life. Through that understanding, meaningful and lasting change becomes possible.
Do you find yourself facing the same challenges again and again?
Perhaps relationships begin well but eventually follow a familiar course. Maybe anxiety returns despite your efforts to manage it. Or perhaps you repeatedly make choices that don't align with what you truly want.
Often these patterns have deeper roots. Therapy can help uncover the emotional and relational dynamics that operate outside of awareness, creating space for greater freedom, choice, and self-understanding.
You may find yourself repeating the same relationship patterns, struggling with anxiety despite outward success, or feeling stuck in ways you can't fully explain.
Therapy offers an opportunity to better understand yourself, your relationships, and the deeper forces shaping your life. I work with adults and couples in Rockridge and throughout California who want more than symptom relief, those who want lasting insight and meaningful change.
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
— Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy
Take Action
01
New Clients
Address the suffering that causes you pain and heal the wounds that lay hidden under the surface.
02
Reaching Out
Deciding to begin therapy is a significant step, and it's normal for people to deeply contemplate starting before moving forward. Once you’re ready, my goal is to make the experience as comfortable as possible. I will try, to the best of my ability, to build a trusting relationship with you in a confidential environment where you can openly discuss sensitive topics, free from shame, guilt, or judgment. I am committed to providing a safe space where you can explore challenging aspects in your life, aspects that oftentimes feel too difficult to share with friends and family.
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New To Therapy
If you are new to therapy, this page offers an introduction to therapy to give you a better understanding of what it might look like as you consider what's best for you moving forward. This decision can be the momentum shift that will change the trajectory of your well-being, relationships, family and place in the world.