Michelle Bronster , LCSW

Michelle Bronster is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) based in New York with ten years of clinical experience. She works with adults across life stages, from young-adult to elder-adult, and has substantial experience in justice-involved settings, including more than nine years designing and leading Dialectical Behavior Therapy groups and individual treatment. Michelle approaches therapy with a foundation of unconditional acceptance and a commitment to doing no harm, adapting methods as clients' needs evolve and combining techniques to meet specific goals.

Her practice emphasizes practical, solution-focused care when appropriate, and she integrates mindfulness and grounding exercises, emotion regulation skills, and distress tolerance strategies into shorter-term and longer-term work. Michelle draws from a range of therapeutic tools including cognitive behavioral approaches, motivational interviewing, narrative and reminiscence techniques, skills-based training, and interpersonal effectiveness work. She has experience supporting people facing anxiety, depression, trauma and abuse, grief, compassion fatigue, caregiver stress, chronic illness and pain, relationship and family difficulties, ADHD, sleep problems, and issues related to aging and end-of-life concerns.

Michelle brings a calm, adaptive style to sessions and aims to be both a sounding board and a guide through life transitions and challenges. She is not currently accepting new clients.

Therapeutic Approaches Adapted for Online Support

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) focuses on building practical skills for managing intense emotions, improving distress tolerance, and strengthening interpersonal effectiveness. It is often used for people coping with overwhelming feelings, self-destructive behaviors, or chronic emotional dysregulation and translates well to structured online sessions and skills coaching.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps clients identify and shift unhelpful thoughts and patterns to change emotional reactions and behaviors. It is goal-oriented and problem-focused, making it a useful approach for anxiety, depression, sleep difficulties, and many everyday challenges when delivered by a licensed professional in virtual formats.

Attachment-Based Therapy explores relational patterns and how early relationships affect current connections and emotional responses. It supports work on relationship challenges, caregiving dynamics, and attachment concerns by fostering awareness and new interaction strategies in a collaborative therapeutic relationship.

Finding the right approach is part of the therapeutic process. Michelle helps clients and therapists work together to determine which methods best fit a person’s needs, goals, and preferences, adjusting the plan as progress unfolds.

Online therapy options such as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging offer flexibility for different schedules and comfort levels. These modalities can make it easier to maintain consistent care, practice skills between sessions, and access support from home or other convenient locations while working with licensed professionals and therapists.