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I did not come to this work through theory only.
I learned it from being with people in their hardest moments.

Twenty years of
real clinical work

I've sat with women in domestic violence shelters,

with young people exiting child protective custody,

with people in acute crisis, and with high-functioning professionals who looked like they had everything together.

What all of them needed, more than anything else, was to be genuinely met.

 

I came to somatic, parts-based, and more depth-oriented work because the talking was not enough.

I kept seeing people who understood everything about their patterns and could not change them.

That is what brought me here

HOW I GOT HERE

My practice has followed
the same path as
the
women I work with.

 

It has evolved. It has deepened. There were chapters I stayed in longer than was comfortable, and chapters I needed to outgrow.

I have never worked from a safe distance.

 

EARLY CAREER

Domestic Violence Shelter

Direct work with women in crisis. Trauma, safety, survival — and what it takes to rebuild a sense of self when everything has been stripped away.

FOLLOWING YEARS

Young Women Exiting Child Protective System

 

Supporting young women navigating the end of foster care — systemic trauma, attachment wounds, and building a life without a map.

MID CAREER

Community Mental Health

 

High-volume, high-acuity work across the full spectrum of mental health need. Where I learned to hold space for the full range of human suffering.

NOW

 

PRIVATE PRACTICE

Choosing depth over volume

When I moved into private practice, I made a deliberate choice: I wanted to work with fewer people and go further with each of them. Real, lasting change that shifts how someone moves through the world, not just how they cope on hard days.

 

I found my people in high-functioning women — women who looked, by every external measure, like they have it together, but who are quietly unraveling underneath. Self-aware, motivated women who had done the work, and are still stuck in the same patterns.

NOW

My practice is evolving with me

I am in a chapter of my own life that is reshaping how I understand this work. Perimenopause, midlife, the particular kind of reckoning that comes when your body starts asking questions your mind has not gotten to yet — I know this territory from the inside.

 

My practice now is more focused, more intentional, and more honest than it is ever been. I work with women who are ready to stop managing and start inhabiting their lives. That work is harder and slower and more meaningful than anything else I know how to do.

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT WORKING WITH ME IS LIKE

This is not a space for
performing progress.

01

You do not have to arrive ready

You do not need clarity or the right words. The work often starts in the blur — the sense that something has to change, even if you cannot name what.

02

The pace follows your nervous system

Not just your story or your thoughts, but the place in your body where the patterns actually live. Somatic work means we include everything, not just what you can articulate.

e of your ambition.

03

I bring my full self

I am not a blank screen. I bring 20+ years of experience, genuine care, and a willingness to go to the hard places with you without judgment.

04

I'll meet your parts with curiosity

Using an IFS-informed lens means we approach every part of you, even the difficult ones. All of it. No version of you is too much for this room.

05

The work is not directive or prescriptive

You will not get homework or a method. You will get genuine therapeutic presence and space to do the real work at whatever pace your nervous system can handle.

06

The goal is not to fix you

You are not broken. The goal is to help you stop working against yourself — so that the capacity you have always had can actually be available to you.

07

We go slowly enough to actually change

Real change is not fast. But it is also not endless. We work at the depth that produces lasting shifts, not surface-level coping that requires constant maintenance.

TRAINING & CREDENTIALS

The foundation
underneath the work

Licensure & Education

 

Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC)

Licensed in Illinois

 

Master of Arts, Forensic Psychology — 2008

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology

Specialized Training

 

 

IFS-Informed Therapy

Parts-based work that approaches every aspect of you — including the parts that protect — with curiosity rather than judgment

 

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Level One

Body-centered trauma therapy that works directly with posture, movement, and physical sensation alongside narrative

 

Hakomi Psychotherapy Graduate

Mindfulness-based somatic therapy that uses present-moment body experience as the primary pathway to deep change

 

Depth Psychotherapy Orientation

Long-form, meaning-focused work that explores the unconscious, identity, and the fuller architecture of a person's inner life

 

Multiple Trauma, Somatic & Attachment Trainings

Ongoing specialized training in trauma treatment, somatic approaches, and attachment theory as it applies to adult therapeutic work

 

 

WHO I WORK WITH

 

High-functioning women navigating anxiety

The kind that looks like success from the outside

 

Trauma and complex trauma

Including the kind that does not come with a clear event

 

Burnout as a nervous system issue

Not a productivity problem, but a body that is been giving more than it is received

 

Perimenopause & midlife transitions

When the body and the self are both changing at once

A note on how I work: I am trained in multiple approaches, but I do not apply them as protocols. The work follows the person in the room — their nervous system, their history, what's alive right now.

 

 

 

WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT HEALING

The principles behind
every single session

I

Healing is possible and it requires more than doing the right things

Real healing — the kind that changes how you experience yourself — requires more than the correct application of strategies. It requires feeling genuinely different in your body and in your relationships.

II

Speed is the enemy of depth — but slow does not mean stuck

You can move toward healing at a pace your system can actually integrate — which is faster than you might think, and slower than you'd probably prefer.

III

The body is not the obstacle — it is holding the map

Working with the body is not a workaround. For most high-functioning women, it is the most direct route to what is not shifting.

IV

There are no bad parts — only parts that have not been understood yet

When the anxiety, the perfectionism, the shutdown feels understood — genuinely understood — it changes. Sometimes dramatically.

V

You get to want a life, not just symptom relief

The women I most love working with want more than to hurt less. They want to feel like themselves again. That kind of work is worth doing.

 

READY WHEN YOU ARE

The first conversation
does not
commit you to anything.

Free 20-minute consultation — a chance to get a sense of each other and decide if it feels right. No pressure. No forms before we have spoken.

 

GET IN TOUCH

Schaumburg, Illinois, United States​

© 2026 Michaela Kozlik, LLC.
Anxiety & Trauma Therapy for Women | Illinois 
virtual individual therapy and therapy intensives

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