Welcome to Recalibrate Therapy, the private psychotherapy practice of Mike Krepick, LICSW.
Located at the intersection of Downtown, South Lake Union, Belltown, and Queen Anne in Seattle, and now offering online therapy throughout Washington state!
Thank you for considering therapy with me!
You have specific concerns and goals for counseling. I have a broad range of counseling experience and love working with diverse people on many different issues! These are some typical services I offer my clients:
Anxiety Counseling and Stress Reduction
Depression Counseling
Posttraumatic Stress Counseling/ PTSD Therapy (Sexual Assault, Child Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Violence, Accidents)
Counseling for Transitions and Change
Career Support and Work-Life Balance
ADHD Counseling
Sleep and Insomnia Therapy
Parenting Support
Grief Counseling
Anger Management and Emotion Regulation
Counseling for Alcohol and Drug Use
Individual Relationship Support for Dating, Partnership, Marriage, Break-up, Infidelity, and Divorce
Counseling for Obsessive Thoughts and Compulsive Behaviors (OCD)
Counseling for Fears, Phobias, and Panic Attacks
In addition to counseling clients in the various ways described above, I am especially adept at providing therapy to a few specific client groups. My 18 years of therapy experience, prior work experience, education, training, skills, and interests align nicely with these common and critical counseling services:
Counseling for High Stress Careers
Counseling for Men
Counseling for Trauma, Abuse, and Sexual Assault Survivors (Posttraumatic Stress & PTSD)
Counseling for Military and First Responders
Counseling for Sleep and Insomnia
Counseling for Spirituality, Religion, Social Justice, and the Greater Good
Please continue reading to learn more about these specialty counseling services!
Work is often overwhelming. There is always too much to do and deadlines are short. You routinely interface with hard-to-please stakeholders. Sometimes you find your flow state and produce but other times you fall prey to distractions or crash out completely. You’re still behind and there is another performance review just ahead. Your manager might be supportive, but they are just as busy and have suggested “use AI” for your challenges one-too-many times. You often work late into the night and struggle to transition to relaxation, partner time, family time, or sleep. Plus, you have many more responsibilities to fulfill outside of work. Resilience is precarious and work-life balance seems impossible.
Here in Seattle, I counsel many people working in Tech: leaders, managers, software engineers, designers, sales representatives, project managers, and others. I have also worked with surgeons, doctors, therapists, attorneys, finance professionals, entrepreneurs, pilots, restaurant managers, real estate agents, global and public health leaders, mechanical engineers, and more. Overworked, under-supported, and stressed-out workers are all-too common across the economy.
I provide external assistance for your challenging work life and reduce your reliance on friends and loved ones. We may work to enhance focus, efficiency, task management, organization, communication, decision making, and emotion regulation. We may address strengths, struggles, and solutions common to neurodiverse workers with ADHD or Autism Spectrum traits. We may examine your mental approach to work, increasing mindfulness or shifting thoughts and beliefs that contribute to anxiety or limit work satisfaction. We might experiment with new boundaries between work and personal life, add practices for relaxation, increase activities for enjoyment, connection, and accomplishment, or adjust your sleep routine. Sometimes we consider the pros and cons of a job or career change, and I accompany you through the transition.
Although gender biases for parenting and socializing children are improving, we are all still impacted by toxic masculinity. As a boy, you were taught to hide or overcome your feelings. The “man up” or “suck it up” command and various emasculating put downs encouraged you to disregard your feelings and overcome emotional and physical pain. You were taught to compete, do it yourself, and win at all costs. These life lessons did not prepare you to build healthy relationships or to accept suboptimal success (ex. your career, physique, or your partner). You may have learned to cope with disappointment in unhealthy ways (ex. overworking, drinking/drugs, pornography, gambling, numbing out, gaming, and TV). If you became a father, you might not have experienced enough positive parent role modeling to connect with your children or to teach them healthy life lessons.
Many men appreciate working with another man in counseling. They value my familiarity with their journey and my expertise in helping men recalibrate. Counseling for Men will help you to reassess your social expectations and beliefs, develop your emotional intelligence, connect with peers and the people you love, and determine and progress with new goals for a more fulfilling life.
Most people will experience at least one trauma in life. Many experience multiple traumas. If you are a trauma survivor, you may be bothered by posttraumatic stress symptoms or PTSD. You may experience intrusive thoughts of the incident. You may avoid the trauma memory, trauma reminders, or life in general. Your emotions and beliefs (about safety, trust, power/control, esteem, and intimacy/relationships) might be “stuck”- negative, unrealistic, or unhealthy. You may find yourself overwhelmed with hypervigilance. Fortunately, you are resilient! Even if you experienced the trauma long ago, trauma recovery is the norm! Posttraumatic Stress/PTSD Counseling will help if those struggles persist.
With eight years’ experience providing evidence-based Posttraumatic Stress/PTSD Counseling to hundreds of trauma, abuse, and sexual assault survivors at Harborview Abuse & Trauma Center, I am well versed in trauma-specific treatments. I will help you overcome avoidance, develop your ability to handle the trauma memory(s), recalibrate your beliefs, feel better, and courageously reengage in life!
Military and First Responders provide critical services to the community. You encounter danger and traumatic stress frequently and work in a high adrenaline environment all the time. Unfortunately, that adrenaline does not flush out of your system for many hours. You might not be adrenaline-free until you return to duty the next day! After a stressful workday, you might gather with your partner, coworkers, or team to debrief or detach from the day and commiserate about the political, bureaucratic, and administrative headaches associated with the job. Or you might just head home to numb out in front of the TV or endlessly click and scroll on your cell phone, too exhausted to engage with your family, friends, or interests. More than other careers, you identify with your job, and may struggle to develop a fulfilling lifestyle and rewarding relationships beyond it.
Depending on your goals and concerns, Counseling for Military and First Responders might include elements of Counseling for Men (regardless of your gender identity since hypermasculinity permeates the work) and/or Trauma Counseling as described above, support for stressors associated with the job, encouragement to develop a meaningful life beyond the job, recalibration of negative beliefs that are barriers, treatment for unhealthy coping and expansion of healthy coping skills, relationship counseling for home and work, and parenting support.
I have worked with many Military personnel and First Responders in my 18 years of counseling. They appreciate my patience and understanding as well as my no-nonsense and direct approach. I look forward to supporting you with critical changes necessary for improving and expanding your life.
You struggle to get to sleep. You wake up multiple times in the middle of the night and toss and turn attempting to return to sleep. You wake up way before your alarm sounds, yet again. The next morning you feel anxious or exhausted, will yourself to get the day going, or give up on morning plans and fight for sleep one more time. Approximately 10% of people experience chronic insomnia and 30-40% of people experience episodic insomnia. Older adults and women are especially prone to insomnia. Episodes are frequently triggered by stress, anxiety, or depression. Regardless of the precipitating factors, insomnia often takes on a life of its own and warrants focused treatment.
You can achieve more restful sleep. I offer CBT for Insomnia (CBT-I), an evidence-based cognitive-behavioral treatment for insomnia. It targets the three primary issues of insomnia: inefficient or disrupted sleep patterns, the loss of association between bed and sleep, and unhelpful beliefs related to sleep struggles.
Treatment begins with logging current sleep patterns. A new sleep schedule is then developed to help compress inefficient sleep into a smaller window. You will experiment with a later bedtime, get up at a more consistent wake-up time, and go to bed only when it is time to sleep (intimacy and sex are also permitted in bed). As you continue logging your sleep, and adjusting sleep timing accordingly, sleep becomes more efficient, and the association between your bed and sleep is restored (like Ivan Pavlov’s dog salivating when the bell rings). In addition to modifying your sleep routine, you will learn about sleep science, consider best practices of sleep hygiene, and explore beliefs that may exacerbate sleep challenges and affect day-to-day functioning.
CBT for Insomnia (CBT-I) is a structured intervention that works incrementally to consolidate sleep and improve sleep quality. Most clients experience significant sleep improvement in 4-8 weeks. They are empowered to continue progress and manage future sleep struggles independently. In addition, other co-occurring mental health concerns, like depression and anxiety, sometimes improve along with sleep.
If you are interested in treatment for sleep problems alone, or in conjunction with other counseling concerns and goals, please contact me to schedule a free initial phone consultation.
You are plugged in and conscious of world instability and social issues. The planet is in crisis and humanity seems to be in constant conflict. There is massive wealth disparity, many people struggle to make ends meet, and homelessness is all too common. Human rights are far from equal. The US and other world governments are intensely divided and lack the direction and cooperation to progress. You want to be a force for good while working a full-time job and managing personal and family responsibilities.
Together, we can explore your values, passions, strengths and struggles, and redefine your purpose and balance. We can process how spirituality and religion influence your beliefs, activities, and activism. We may need to process how past negative experiences or traumas in a faith community impact you too. Aligning your values and actions will foster greater harmony and purpose in your life.
I love counseling diverse clients on their spiritual journeys and in their desire to make a difference in the world. I am so grateful for educational, personal, and professional experiences that prepared me for the work: studying a liberal Jesuit undergraduate curriculum at Boston College; working with homeless individuals as a Jesuit Volunteer; supporting faith, spirituality, and community service programming for high school students and teachers as a campus minister for five years; exploring social justice, privilege, oppression, and systemic change as a masters student at the University of Washington School of Social Work; counseling youth and families stuck in the King County juvenile justice system for three years; counseling trauma survivors at Harborview Abuse & Trauma Center for eight years; and supporting private practice clients on their journeys for the last seven years. These experiences inform my ability to counsel clients as they integrate values, faith, spirituality, and meaning into their lives. Please reach out today so I can accompany you on your journey!
