About Melissa
Melissa Strauss is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) who helps people manage stress, anxiety, relationship strain, grief, and low self-esteem. She works with common struggles like depression, sleep problems, eating concerns, and life transitions. Melissa aims to create a calm, approachable space where people feel heard and can begin to make small changes.
She uses straightforward methods that focus on skills and understanding. Sessions often include thought work, emotion-focused exercises, and attention to how past bonds affect current relationships.
Background and approach
Melissa adapts her approach to each person's needs and goals instead of using the same plan for everyone. Her experience spans more than a decade in counseling work. That background includes help for people facing trauma and abuse, intimacy-related issues, ADHD concerns, and identity matters such as gender dysphoria and LGBTQ issues.
She also supports those dealing with caregiver stress, fertility concerns, and questions about life purpose. Melissa blends practical tools with exploration of feelings and attachment patterns. She may suggest cognitive techniques to change unhelpful thoughts, emotionally-focused steps to strengthen connections, or acceptance-based ideas to cope with difficult feelings.
The aim is to teach skills that people can use between sessions. Sessions are offered in English and Melissa sees clients from Pennsylvania and beyond. She works with people on relationship challenges, career stress, parenting strains, and many everyday issues where anxiety or low mood interfere with life.
How her approaches fit with online therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people accept difficult thoughts and feelings while taking steps toward what matters to them. It is often used for anxiety, stress, and coping with life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. CBT is commonly used for anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and eating-related issues. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early bonds affect current relationships and emotional reactions, which can help with intimacy-related issues, communication problems, and caregiver stress.Deciding which approach to use is part of the work together. Melissa will talk with each person about their goals, symptoms, and what feels helpful. She tailors methods and checks in regularly so therapy stays relevant and practical for the client's life.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for more in-depth dialogue and emotional work, phone sessions can fit a shorter window or lower bandwidth, live chat suits brief check-ins, and messaging lets people reflect between sessions. These options make it easier to fit counseling into busy schedules and to continue work when travel or location would otherwise be a barrier.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist 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
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