Member Highlight — David Schwartz, LMFT

Michelle Friedman, LMFT

Michelle Friedman, LMFT, has been a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist since 2008. As an experienced therapist working in Santa Clarita, she specializes in 12-step support, co-dependency and grief counseling. Michelle is also trained to work with domestic violence issues. Her clients range in age from 14 to 65, and she works mostly with Rogerian and Cognitive therapy disciplines.

In addition to her therapy work, Michelle also brings a vast amount of real-world experience to her practice. She previously worked as a Programmer Analyst for 25 years. In that career she met with clients, assessed their needs and then accomplished her tasks. While the work sounds considerably different from therapy, the basic needs were the same – to determine what a client needed and then help provide it for them.

When asked why she chose therapy as a career, Michelle said that, “I always had a natural ability to listen and give constructive feedback. I had a psychiatrist suggest that I would be a good therapist.” When discussing her reasons for leaving her former career, Michelle commented, “I had had enough of being a programmer. I was working more with machines than people.” Wanting to relate to and help people in need was a real motivator for Michelle. As for her education, she did her undergraduate work at California State University, Northridge, and received her graduate degree from Pepperdine.

Michelle works with a therapy dog in her practice and she finds the dog to be extremely intuitive. She says the therapy dog knows when people are hurting. She works in a non-judgmental way and says she can work with almost anyone without judgment. Michelle has been a member-at-large at our San Fernando Valley CAMFT chapter in past years, and currently has dual membership at both our chapter and the CAMFT Santa Clarita chapter.

When asked what she enjoys most about working in the profession, Michelle says she really enjoys talking and listening to people. She likes assisting her clients to find their way out of the conflict they’re in, or to see other possibilities they wouldn’t have necessarily thought of without therapy. In addition, because this is a second career for Michelle, she knows what it’s like to change careers after a long time in one profession. As a result, she feels good about helping people who are contemplating career changes. In this day and age, it’s much rarer for someone to stay in the same position throughout their lifetime than to have multiple careers. Working with a person who has experienced the uncertainty of changing profession can really be a benefit to helping those who are doing the same thing.

Michelle Friedman, LMFT (license # 47749), can be reached by phone at 818.730.8069. She works in Santa Clarita by appointment, and can also be contacted through her website, http://www.yourfamilyremedy.com.