About Melissa
Melissa Lehrich is a California licensed clinical social worker with 25 years of experience. She focuses on helping people manage stress and anxiety and supports those facing relationship strain, grief, and life transitions. Her style is straightforward and compassionate, aimed at making therapy approachable for worried parents and busy adults.
She uses practical tools from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to spot unhelpful thoughts and build new habits. Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills are added for managing intense emotions and improving coping.
Background and approach
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing can be used for processing traumatic memories when appropriate. Sessions center on clear goals and small, doable steps. She works with people on sleep problems, panic and social anxiety, self-esteem, and career concerns.
Topics such as parenting stress, anger, and isolation are addressed with respect and concrete strategies. Her approach includes talking through difficult moments, practicing new skills between sessions, and adjusting plans as needs change. She pays attention to patterns around control, forgiveness, guilt, and intimacy so clients can make meaningful changes in daily life.
Melissa draws on a long clinical background to tailor care to each person. She prefers simple language and realistic plans so progress feels possible. The aim is to reduce distress and increase functioning in ways that fit each person's life.
How Melissa's Approaches Translate to Online Care
CBT helps people notice unhelpful thoughts and change behaviors that keep problems going. Online CBT sessions often include short exercises, worksheets, and concrete homework that can be reviewed together during video or text check-ins.DBT offers skills for handling intense emotions, improving relationships, and tolerating distress. In remote sessions these skills are practiced in conversation, with therapists coaching breathing, grounding, and communication techniques that can be reinforced over chat or phone.
EMDR focuses on processing upsetting memories and reducing their emotional charge through guided bilateral stimulation and focused talk. When used online, the therapist leads the process step by step and checks in frequently to ensure the work is paced to the person’s needs.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will discuss goals, past experiences, and preferences to decide whether CBT, DBT, EMDR, or a mix makes the most sense for each person.
Online therapy offers flexibility and makes it easier to fit care into a busy life. Video calls let people work face to face across distances. Phone sessions can be shorter check-ins when bandwidth or time are limited. Live chat and text-based messaging provide ongoing support between sessions and allow progress to continue without waiting for the next appointment.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Anger management
- Career difficulties
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
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