About Melissa
Melissa Averett is a Licensed Professional Counselor with 14 years of experience. She trained in counseling at Southeastern Louisiana University and has worked in both residential and outpatient settings. Her background includes helping women in recovery and providing long-term care for adults facing a wide range of struggles.
Melissa aims to create a calm, respectful space where people can begin to make changes. She favors a person-centered way of working that starts with listening.
Background and approach
That approach helps people name what matters most to them and set clear, realistic goals. Melissa also uses cognitive behavioral strategies to spot unhelpful thinking and replace it with more useful ideas. Sessions often include practical exercises and simple ways to test new thinking between meetings.
Melissa teaches skills people can use right away. She covers healthy boundaries, building self-esteem, making clearer choices, and improving communication. She also helps people learn coping skills for stress, grief, trauma, sleep trouble, and substance-related concerns.
Her aim is to offer straightforward tools that fit everyday life. Clients can expect warmth and directness in sessions. Melissa focuses on small, steady changes rather than quick fixes.
She works with people who are ready to try new strategies and to practice them between sessions. Based in Louisiana, she brings experience from both residential treatment and outpatient counseling. Her work emphasizes respect, clear feedback, and practical steps toward clients' goals.
How Melissa’s Approaches Work Online
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and understanding the person first. The therapist follows the client's lead, reflects their experience, and helps set goals that feel meaningful. This approach is useful for people who need a listening space to sort out feelings and priorities.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, is a hands-on method that looks at thoughts and actions. It helps people notice unhelpful thinking, try small experiments, and build new habits. CBT is often used for anxiety, depression, sleep trouble, and some stress-related problems.
Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. Melissa will talk with the client about goals, try methods that fit those goals, and adjust as needed. The process is collaborative and paced to what the person can use between sessions.
Online therapy offers several practical benefits. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation when that helps. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or for a shorter check-in. Live chat and text-based messaging make it possible to get support with quick updates, homework, or when scheduling is tight. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and to keep momentum between meetings.
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What this counselor works with
Most often
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed
- Louisiana
- Languages
- English