LMHC, 7 years of experience
New to Grow
My name is Michael Hutchinson - though I go by Hutch - and I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in the State of Florida. I have been working in the field of mental health since 2012, and actively practicing with individuals, couples, and groups since 2018. At the core of my practice is a constructivist approach, treating individuals as experts on themselves as we work to apply the theories of change I endorse to create meaningful/ values-congruent improvements wherever indicated. In my individual work I aim to scaffold skills, concepts, and techniques to ensure that distress is resolved and change is promoted across any number of domains of life. I strive to promote self-determination, and to develop the perspective that all emotions are carriers of information that deserve proactive plans or reassurance through context.
It will always be my goal to ensure clients have concrete tools and techniques sufficient enough to one day say, "I no longer need to see you, Hutch." Core to this goal is the ability to develop an awareness of how choices are made, and how thought influences emotion, while ensuring balance is struck across life domains. In order to do this, my role is to make sure a nonjudgmental and curious environment is created while insight is developed as to where values may diverge from those of others. On the first session, I like to start by asking some clarifying questions, to get a sense of where change is desired and what would be expected through our work together. From there, I like to start setting the foundation for discussing problems and designing interventions, focusing on concrete skills and techniques, and always seeking to have something to further refine or practice between sessions.
My approach is highly individualized - my values are not necessarily yours, and how I make choices may not be the best way for you to make choices, and what constitutes a meaningful life often requires developing clarity around various "who am I?.." stories. With those stories rooted in values, choice becomes a key element of my approach, and anything that leads to choices that are not values-congruent becomes an immediate point of curiosity/ intervention. At times, states of mind/ emotion can become a potential barrier, and having highly generalizable skills for regulating/ resolving emotion is important. In this way, emotions serve as carriers of information, representing key interests, at times misfiring, but always representing something that can be approach from a change or an acceptance perspective. This mentality, I believe, leads to clinically significant improvements, and empowers an internal locus of control that influences every important domain of life.
I work with adult clients from all walks of life. My early carrier focused heavily on severe and persistent mental health concerns, with several years spent as an inpatient therapist, and through my community-based background and positions held in outpatient therapy departments, medication clinics, and within hospital administration, I have found myself working well with all adult populations.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy serves as the foundation to all other interventions, and provides a skill base that is highly generalizable.
As an expansion on the CBT foundation, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy serves as a values based lens to assess how choices are made, where attention is focused, and where change is and is not possible - while making sure not to allow anything beyond control to impair quality of life.
Defining various, "who am I?.." stories can be essential to having guiding principals to how decisions are made, goals are set, or boundaries reinforced. Further, understanding one's own sense of meaning can be core to preventing undue states of anxiety, depression, or anger.
Over the course of life there is an accumulation of loss that everyone experiences, from relationships, to careers, to abilities, and even domains like faith or trust. Being able to complete those experienced losses helps ensure there is no longer an lingering influence on how we move through our current day world/ relationships.
Having enough of an understanding of the "why" backing therapy interventions, as well as education in how mental health symptoms tie into theories of change, leads to a more empowered sense of self, and improves the likelihood of preventing full symptom relapse.