Dr. Michele Dugan has been in private practice in the South Bay for over 20 years with offices in

Manhattan and Hermosa Beach.  She specializes in the treatment of stress and adjustment disorders in children, adolescents, and adults, providing individual, family and couples therapy.   Dr. Dugan has aided many in healing from psychological injury, learning new coping skills, improving in esteem, confidence, and relations with others, improving school or work performance, and experiencing significant improvement in quality of life and state of mind.

Stress reactions often occur when coping skills are overwhelmed by negative life events, demands,

change, conflict, low self-esteem, or the development of negative life patterns.  Negative stress can occur suddenly from overwhelming life events such as death, the diagnosis of an illness, loss of employment, divorce, or multiple forms of assault or traumatic events.  Negative stress can also

be the result of difficulties coping with inherited traits such as ADHD, learning difficulties, tendencies

toward depression, anxiety, and substance abuse or negative stress may occur over time as the result of multiple factors including poor parenting and resulting impaired esteem and dysfunctional thought patterns, psychological wounds suffered during childhood, lack of good peer relations,

chronic job stress, or family/relationship conflict. 

Symptoms occur when stress overwhelms coping skills over time.  Such symptoms can be experienced as physical complaints, reactive behavior, obsessive and fear based thinking, or emotional upset.  Dr. Dugan’s focus on treatment is to aid the individual in reducing stressors and improving or developing new coping skills to not only alleviate symptoms but to improve the quality of life and relations overall.

The general goal of therapy is to increase self awareness and through the therapeutic alliance develop new coping skills, resolve or reduce psychological injury and associated symptoms, transform negative thought and behavioral patterns into positive ones and develop more positive and satisfying relations with self and others

                                             email : micheledugan@earthlink.net