La Jolla therapy for high-performing neurodivergent adults
If you've spent your career being the most capable person in the room — and the most exhausted — this is where that changes.
In-person and virtual. California clients can meet in person in the San Diego County area or by secure video anywhere in the state.
Michel Bordeau is a licensed therapist and executive coach serving clients in La Jolla, UTC, Torrey Pines, and Carmel Valley — in person in the nearby Solana Beach area, or by secure video. Licensed therapy & coaching for high-performing neurodivergent adults. His practice is built around one specific kind of client: high-performing neurodivergent adults who have hit a wall they can't think their way out of.
This isn't generalist therapy. It is a synthesized protocol built from 10+ years of clinical and academic work, grounded in DBT, Frankl's logotherapy, developmental psychology, and nutritional science. The work is precise, direct, and built for people who have little patience for being talked at.
Who arrives here
Who comes to Michel in La Jolla
The clients who find Michel aren't searching for warmth. They're searching for someone who won't waste their time.
They are biotech founders and researchers on the Torrey Pines mesa, physicians, professors, finance professionals, and engineers across La Jolla and UTC. Many received an autism or ADHD diagnosis in their 30s, 40s, or 50s — and found it clarifying rather than devastating. They're not broken. They are, finally, legible to themselves.
Three things typically bring them in:
Professional friction
A management change that disrupted a finely-tuned system. A broken promise around autonomy or advancement. The specific pain of being the most competent person in the room and being treated like a liability for it.
Relational strain
A partner who interprets neurodivergent thinking as misbehavior. Relationships that demand a version of you that doesn't exist.
Burnout
The body stops cooperating. The inbox feels impossible. The bank account login feels impossible. Precise self-awareness — with no ability to act on it.
The protocol
What the work looks like
Michel's approach is not borrowed from a single school. It is synthesized — and it's his.
The entry point is always the same: a guaranteed early win. A small, certain change that builds
trust before ambition. From there, the work moves into what needs to move.
Signature methods include:
Body Doubling — Virtual or in-person co-presence that makes task initiation possible when starting alone isn't.
Wise Mind Integration — The DBT synthesis of emotion and reason, for people hijacked by neither.
Nutritional Integration — Addressing executive function through diet, not as a footnote but as a clinical lever.
The Curriculum of Life — Returning authorship of your own professional, relational, and personal path to your hands, not your employer's or your family's.
The work is direct. Brutally honest, by design. That honesty is not abrasive — it is a form of
respect for your intelligence.
12-week program
The 12-week burnout recovery program — available to La Jolla clients
For clients in acute burnout, Michel offers a structured 12-week program with a measurable goal: moving the nervous system from predominantly sympathetic to predominantly parasympathetic. This is not a metaphor. It is a clinical arc, run with five to six clients at a time.
If you are a La Jolla professional who dreads opening your laptop — or a high-achiever who has stopped being able to function at your own standard — this program was built for you.
Michel's practice has two distinct tracks, and clients self-select naturally over time.
Therapy
For clients where the diagnosis carries acute clinical weight — where dysfunction is
actively impairing professional or relational life. It operates within a licensed clinical
framework.
Coaching
For clients who have internalized their identity, are ready to self-advocate, and want to
design the life they actually want — with far greater freedom to build referrals, networks,
and community.
Many clients move from therapy to coaching. That's not a loss. It's the work succeeding.
Why male clients find Michel — and why women do too
More than 80% of therapists in California are women. Michel is not one of them. For many male
clients in La Jolla — executives, founders, engineers — that difference matters more than they
expect.
His client base is 50/50 male and female. Many of the women on his caseload are autistic or ADHD,
with a directness that has been misread their entire lives as a personality flaw. Michel doesn't
misread it. He works with it.
La Jolla · UTC · Torrey Pines · Carmel Valley · Del Mar · Pacific Beach · San Diego County
Michel serves clients throughout La Jolla and coastal San Diego via both virtual and in-person sessions — in-person meetings are in the Solana Beach area, roughly fifteen minutes up the coast. Virtual sessions are available statewide across California.
The work you avoid is usually the work. Let's begin.
