Mike Smukler

I hold a Master’s in Mental Health Counseling from UMass Boston and have been independently licensed in Massachusetts since 2009. Before this work, I was on track to become a documentary filmmaker, and in 2004 I spent a year on a suicide hotline that changed the direction of my life. Both taught me the same thing: pay close attention, don’t rush people, and trust that people usually know more about themselves than they let on.

Since then I’ve worked across private practice, outpatient care, and community mental health, and I’ve also held clinical supervision and leadership roles supporting other clinicians. Today I work exclusively with adults, most often on anxiety, anger, overthinking, and the kind of life transitions that don’t look like a crisis from the outside but feel like one from the inside.

My training includes mindfulness-based approaches, CBT, ACT, and Taoist philosophy, but I don’t force sessions into a method. I work with what’s actually in front of us.

That Taoist thread matters most: the idea that real change tends to come less from forcing it and more from loosening what keeps a person stuck. So I don’t come in with an agenda for who you should become, and I won’t hand you a checklist. I ask more than I tell, and I trust that clarity comes from staying with something rather than pushing past it.

In practice, that means sessions are unhurried and follow what’s actually going on for you, not a predetermined structure. We meet patterns with curiosity instead of judgment, and slow down enough to notice what’s underneath the surface issue. Some people use our work to move through one specific thing. Others keep it going as an ongoing practice. Either way, it’s yours to shape, not mine to direct.

First sessions are conversational, not clinical. We meet by video, and there’s no script or checklist to get through. I’ll ask about what’s bringing you in, some background, and what you’re hoping might be different, but the point isn’t to complete a form, it’s to start getting a real sense of each other.

If you’ve never done therapy before, that’s completely fine, many of my clients haven’t. You don’t need to have it figured out or know the right way to say it. I ask more than I tell, and I’d rather follow what’s actually on your mind than move through a predetermined agenda.

By the end, you should have a decent sense of what working together would feel like, and so will I. The initial session runs about 55 minutes. It’s meant to help us both find out if this is a good fit, nothing more is expected of you than showing up as you are.