About Melissa
Melissa Strauss is a Licensed Professional Counselor with 13 years of clinical experience. She helps people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and relationship and intimacy concerns. Parents and individuals also turn to her for help with grief, self-esteem, eating and sleeping difficulties, and navigating big life changes.
Melissa uses clear, practical methods in sessions. She focuses on the person in front of her, listening first and then offering tools that fit that person’s life.
Background and approach
Sessions are conversational and collaborative, with attention to emotions, patterns, and everyday habits that get in the way. Her approach draws on cognitive behavioral techniques to change unhelpful thinking and behavior. She also uses attachment-based ideas to look at how relationships shape expectations and reactions.
Emotion-focused work helps people name and work with strong feelings during difficult moments. Melissa has broad experience with topics such as LGBT issues, gender dysphoria, ADHD, bipolar concerns, and family-related patterns like blended family and fatherhood issues. She also supports people dealing with fertility, caregiving stress, guilt, and isolation.
Her background includes work across many settings over more than a decade. People who choose Melissa can expect practical goals, steadiness, and a direct but warm style. She encourages clients to use their strengths and to try small changes between sessions.
Progress is discussed openly so plans can be adjusted as needed.
How Melissa’s Approaches Work Online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people clarify what matters most to them and take action toward those values even when feelings are hard. It’s useful for anxiety, stress, and making life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on spotting unhelpful thoughts and behaviors and testing new ways of thinking and acting to reduce symptoms like low mood or worry. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early and current relationships shape how someone connects, reacts, and trusts others; it can be helpful for intimacy, communication problems, and family patterns.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Melissa will listen to your goals and try methods that fit your situation. She partners with clients to adapt techniques over time so the plan stays useful and realistic.
Online sessions offer flexible options like video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is good for fuller conversations and reading nonverbal cues. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or you need a shorter check-in. Live chat and text messaging work well for quick updates, brief coaching, or when typing feels more comfortable. These formats make it simpler to fit therapy around work, parenting, and day-to-day life while still working with a licensed professional.
Questions people ask
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What this counselor works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Grief
Also listed
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Parenting issues
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 13 years
- Licensed
- Pennsylvania, New Jersey
- Languages
- English