About Melissa
Melissa Wooden is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) based in Virginia. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and struggles with addiction. Her style is warm and interactive, and she aims to make therapy a practical place to learn new ways of coping.
She uses straightforward talk and concrete tools in sessions. Melissa blends client-centered work with cognitive behavioral techniques to help people change unhelpful thoughts and habits.
Background and approach
She also draws on dialectical behavior ideas to teach emotion regulation and coping skills. Clients usually work together to set clear goals and small steps toward change. Melissa emphasizes respect and sensitivity during conversations, and she adapts the pace to each person.
Sessions often include skills practice and simple experiments to test new behaviors between meetings. Her background includes three years as a practicing LPC in Virginia and broader experience in the mental health field. That experience includes supporting people dealing with mood disorders, obsessive thoughts and compulsions, social anxiety, and problems with alcohol or drugs.
Melissa helps people address relationship and communication problems, feelings of emptiness or guilt, and struggles with life purpose. She uses motivational interviewing when people want to find personal reasons to change, and existential ideas to talk through meaning and values. The aim is steady, practical progress tailored to each person's priorities.
Therapeutic approaches you can use online
Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes listening and collaboration. It focuses on understanding your perspective and helping you feel heard while you decide what changes matter most. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and actions and uses practical exercises to reduce anxiety and change unhelpful habits. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches skills for managing intense emotions, improving distress tolerance, and handling strong urges without acting on them.Choosing the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will talk with you about your situation, goals, and preferences and together you will decide what methods to try. This collaborative process lets the plan shift as needs change and as you learn what helps most.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to meet. Video calls let you work face to face when visual cues help progress. Phone sessions can be easier when less bandwidth is available or when you want a shorter check-in. Live chat or text-based messaging supports frequent brief check-ins and skill practice between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, school, or family routines while using the approaches above to address anxiety, mood, addiction concerns, and related issues.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Addictions
- Anger management
Also listed
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 3 years
- Licensed
- Virginia
- Languages
- English
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