Am I the Right Therapist for You?
Choosing a therapist is a strange kind of shopping.
You're often at your lowest when you start looking. You open eight tabs of directory profiles that all use the same words — compassionate, safe space, judgment-free, holistic — and none of them tell you what it would actually feel like to sit across from that person. Then you're supposed to pick one, hand over your worst week, and hope.
So let me try to do something more useful than say "safe space" again. Here's who I am, how I actually work, who I tend to help well — and who I'm honestly not the right fit for.
My training and experience
I'm Jewel Cannon, a Licensed Professional Counselor in Michigan. I've been licensed since 2019.
I hold a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Oakland University, and two bachelor's degrees from Eastern Michigan University — one in Psychology and one in Communication. That second one matters more than it sounds like it should. A lot of what goes wrong in people's lives and relationships is a communication problem wearing a costume.
Before I moved into private practice, I worked across a fairly wide range of settings: crisis work, high-risk clients, in-home family therapy, and psychoeducation groups. I've worked with children, adolescents, adults, and couples.
I mention the crisis work specifically because of what it taught me: not to flinch. If you tell me something you've never said out loud — something you're braced to be judged for — I'm not going to get visibly uncomfortable and change the subject. I've heard hard things. I can hold hard things.
I've also done research on attachment styles in relationships and on gratitude and appreciation. Both of those show up in the room. Attachment gives me a framework for why the same painful pattern keeps finding you in different relationships. Gratitude work, done properly and not as toxic positivity, is one of the more reliable tools I know for shifting a stuck mood.
Why I do this work
There's a version of my story I could tell to sound inspirational. I'd rather just tell you the useful part.
In my early twenties, I got very sick. Chronic gastrointestinal illness that no one could name, alongside generalized anxiety and PTSD. Frequent hospital stays. Stretches where I couldn't eat. I spent what should have been the best years of my life exhausted, frightened, and repeatedly told by specialists that they weren't sure what was wrong.
When the answers ran out, I went looking for my own. I changed how I ate. I started my own counseling. I built a spiritual practice from nothing.
I don't share that so you'll be impressed. I share it because if you've ever been dismissed by someone who was supposed to help you — if you've ever left an appointment feeling crazier than when you walked in — I know that specific feeling from the inside. You won't have to convince me that your experience is real.
How I actually work in session
I'm warm, and I'm direct. Those aren't in tension. I'm not going to nod silently for fifty minutes while you fill the space. I'm also not going to hand you a worksheet and call it therapy. If I think you're circling something, I'll say so — kindly, but I'll say it.
I work primarily from a cognitive behavioral framework. In plain terms: your thoughts, your feelings, and your behaviors are in a loop, each one feeding the next. Most of the time you're only aware of the part that hurts. The work is learning to see the whole loop and find the place where you can actually interrupt it.
I take a holistic view of mental health. Your sleep, your movement, what you eat, what you believe, and who you spend time with are all part of the picture. If you tell me you haven't slept properly in three months, we're going to talk about that — it isn't off-topic, it's probably load-bearing.
We build tools, not just insight. Understanding why you're anxious is genuinely useful. It is also not the same as having something to do at 2 a.m. when your chest is tight. You should leave sessions with things you can actually use.
Who I tend to help well
Adults navigating anxiety, panic, or chronic stress
People processing trauma and PTSD
People of color who are tired of explaining the cultural context of their own life before getting to the actual problem
People in a transition that knocked them sideways — career, relationship, identity, health
Couples stuck in the same argument wearing different clothes
High-functioning people who look fine on paper and are quietly running on empty
Anyone who has been managing alone so long that it's started to feel like a personality trait rather than a load
Who I'm probably not the right fit for
If you need a higher level of care. Some situations need intensive outpatient treatment, partial hospitalization, or inpatient care. Weekly outpatient therapy isn't the right container for everything, and if that's where you are, the caring thing is to say so and help you find the right referral.
If you need medication management. I'm a counselor, not a prescriber. I can work alongside a psychiatrist or your primary care doctor, and many of my clients do exactly that — but I can't prescribe.
If you need someone available in an emergency. I'm a solo practitioner. I'm not a crisis service and I can't be reachable around the clock. If you're in immediate danger or thinking about harming yourself, please call or text 988 — the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline — or call 911, or go to your nearest emergency room. That's not me deflecting; it's me telling you where the help that actually fits is.
If you're not located in Michigan. My counseling license is a Michigan license, which means I can only provide therapy to clients physically located in Michigan. (Wellness coaching is a different, non-clinical service, and that one I can offer anywhere.)
If you need me to bill your insurance directly. I'm a private-pay practice. There are real upsides to that — no diagnosis sitting in an insurer's file, no third party deciding when you've had enough sessions — but it does mean paying out of pocket. I provide a superbill on request that you can submit for possible out-of-network reimbursement. If insurance coverage is essential for you, a paneled therapist is the better call, and I'd rather tell you that now than three sessions in.
What working together looks like
All of my sessions are online, by video, so you can do this from your own couch without adding a commute to an already full week.
I offer individual counseling, couples counseling, wellness coaching, and one-on-one guided meditation. Individual sessions run 50–55 minutes. Full rates are listed on my services page — I put them in writing because you shouldn't have to email a stranger to find out whether you can afford help.
If you'd rather start on your own, I wrote the Cultivate Wellness Workbook for exactly that. It's the CBT and coping-skills work I do with clients, in a format you can pick up at your kitchen table.
Some questions worth asking any therapist
Whether or not you contact me, take these with you:
What's your experience with what I'm dealing with specifically?
What does a typical session with you look like?
How will we know if this is working?
What's your policy if I need to reach you between sessions?
What happens if I decide you're not the right fit?
A good therapist will answer all five without getting defensive. Number five especially. If someone bristles at that question, that is your answer.
If you've read this far
Something brought you here, and you've now read a great deal about a stranger's training and philosophy, which is not most people's idea of a good time. That tells me you're taking this seriously.
You don't need to arrive with the right words. You don't need a clear explanation of what's wrong — figuring that out is the work, not the prerequisite for it. And if it turns out I'm not your person, I'll help you find someone who is.
When you're ready, take a look at my services or reach out. No pressure, and no rush.