About Melissa
Melissa Herceg is a licensed clinical social worker with 25 years of experience in California. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, self-esteem struggles, and career or life transitions. Her approach aims to be respectful and practical so people feel heard and understood from the first session.
Her work often centers on concrete coping skills. She helps clients break problems into smaller steps and find short-term wins. Melissa also supports people facing the transition to parenthood and postpartum challenges, and she listens to concerns about isolation and life purpose.
Background and approach
Melissa adapts conversations and plans to each person’s situation. She uses structured methods to guide sessions while staying flexible to whatever a person brings that day. She pays attention to relationship and attachment issues that affect mood and functioning, including challenges connected to adoption, foster care, and blended families.
Her practice includes support for caregivers dealing with stress and for people who are hearing impaired. She also addresses social anxiety and phobias with focused strategies. Sessions emphasize practical steps people can try between meetings to move forward.
Melissa works in English and brings a straightforward, compassionate style. She aims to make starting therapy less daunting and to build a plan that fits a person’s life and goals.
How Melissa’s Approaches Work Online
Motivational Interviewing focuses on conversations that help people find their own reasons to change. It uses gentle questions and reflection to build motivation and tackle goals like managing anxiety or improving work habits.Solution-Focused Therapy centers on small, practical steps and what already works. Sessions identify realistic, short-term changes and track progress so people see improvement between meetings.
The therapist will work with each person to choose the best approach. Decisions are collaborative and based on the client’s needs, goals, and comfort with different techniques. Together they may combine methods or try one approach for a few sessions to see what fits.
Online sessions are offered by video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to give flexibility. Video is useful for in-depth conversation and nonverbal cues, phone calls can fit a quick check-in or lower bandwidth, and chat or text can work for short updates or when typing feels easier. This range lets people continue work on anxiety, stress, and life changes while fitting therapy into a busy schedule.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Self esteem
- Career difficulties
Also listed
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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