Michelle Sorensen

Michelle Sorensen has been living with Type 1 diabetes since 1998, when she was 24 years old. She was in the middle of graduate school, training to become a psychologist. She is now a member of the Ontario College of Psychologists and has a private practice in Clinical Psychology in Ottawa, Canada. Using a cognitive behavioural approach to therapy, Michelle helps patients with a wide range of issues. Michelle has developed a speciality in counselling patients with diabetes. She combines her knowledge about changing thoughts, feelings and behaviours with the understanding that comes from personally living with Type 1 diabetes herself for over 13 years to help patients change their thoughts and modify their behavior.

Michelle believes adaptation to living with this chronic disease would be more manageable if more psychological support was available to people with diabetes. She hopes to help fill this gap in diabetes care by helping diabetes health professionals become more aware of the ways in which they can support and educate their patients about issues like grief, accessing supports and changing the negative thoughts and behaviours that plague many people living with this challenging condition. She speaks about various topics related to diabetes management, including counseling approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational interviewing.

Michelle considers her greatest accomplishment to be her healthy family. She and her husband Ben are parents to four children: girls aged 6 and 4, as well as 18 month old twins (one boy and a girl). They consider diabetes their fifth child, requiring lots of attention and care if they want it to behave well!

Michelle welcomes questions or comments at her email: sorensenCBT [at] gmail.com.