Michael Penkaty, LPC

Michael Penkaty is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Colorado with 10 years of clinical experience. He focuses on relationship and family concerns, trauma and abuse, intimacy-related issues, parenting stress, anger, and low self-esteem. He also works with depression, coping with life changes, multicultural concerns, obsessions and compulsions, and personality disorder-related struggles.

He approaches sessions as a collaborative process. He treats the person, not a diagnosis. He listens for strengths and practical steps clients can use between meetings. Conversations are straightforward and paced to what feels manageable for each person.

Michael draws on several evidence-informed approaches to guide sessions. He uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help people clarify values and take committed steps. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is used to identify patterns of thinking that maintain distress. Client-Centered Therapy supports a respectful, person-led conversation about difficult choices.

In practice he mixes those approaches with emotionally-focused ideas and mindfulness exercises when useful. That can look like short attention practices, role-based conversations about relationship moments, or structured behavioral experiments to test unhelpful assumptions. Each plan is revisited as progress is made.

People who come for help with family tension or parenting strain often leave with clearer next steps. Others use sessions to work through the aftermath of trauma, manage anger, or rebuild intimacy. Michael asks simple, practical questions to help people make small, steady changes.

How Michael uses therapy approaches online