About Melissa
Melissa Colton is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) with 27 years of experience. She focuses on practical ways to help people manage stress, anxiety, mood concerns, and life transitions. Melissa uses simple, respectful language and aims to make therapy feel manageable for busy parents and adults.
She leans on client-centered work to build a trusting relationship and to follow each person's priorities. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is used to find and change unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns.
Background and approach
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and mindfulness techniques are incorporated to teach concrete skills for emotional regulation and distress tolerance. Melissa commonly helps people facing depression, bipolar mood concerns, trauma and abuse, addictions, and social anxiety. She also supports issues around self-esteem, grief, intimacy, career stress, parenting strain, and compassion fatigue.
Additional topics she addresses include guilt, shame, life purpose, and ADHD-related challenges. Sessions aim to be collaborative and goal-focused. Therapy often includes skills practice, short-term problem solving, and gentle exploration of values and meaning.
Melissa values the therapeutic relationship and prioritizes clear communication and steady support. She provides services from Florida and conducts sessions in English. Her approach is down-to-earth and practical, designed to help people make gradual, lasting changes one step at a time.
How Melissa's Approaches Work Online
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and following the client's goals. The therapist emphasizes a respectful relationship and helps people identify what matters most to them and set realistic steps toward change.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the thoughts and actions that keep problems going. Online sessions use practical exercises and homework to change unhelpful thinking and build different habits that reduce anxiety and low mood.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches clear skills for managing intense emotions and improving relationships. In remote sessions this can mean practicing distress-tolerance, emotion-regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills between appointments.
Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to choose and adjust methods based on their needs, goals, and what feels most helpful. Decisions are revisited as progress is made.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for in-depth talk therapy and skills demonstrations, phone can be easier when bandwidth is limited, and chat or messaging work well for brief check-ins or skills practice between sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy lives and maintain steady progress.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Family conflicts
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Mood disorders
- Parenting issues
- Relationship issues
- Social anxiety and phobia
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 27 years
- Licensed
- Florida
- Languages
- English
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