Who arrives here
Who comes to Michel in Solana Beach
The clients who find Michel aren't searching for warmth. They're searching for someone who won't waste their time.
They are entrepreneurs, architects, creative professionals, executives, engineers, and AI founders. 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 Solana Beach 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 Solana Beach 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.
Read the full 12-week program →
Two doors
Therapy vs. coaching: two doors
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.
Therapy + Coaching — which door is yours →
Fit
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 Solana Beach — 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.
Solana Beach · Del Mar · La Jolla · Encinitas · Carmel Valley · Rancho Santa Fe · San Diego County
Michel serves clients throughout coastal San Diego via both virtual and in-person sessions. Virtual sessions are available statewide across California.
