About Merry
Merry Walensa is a California licensed professional clinical counselor (LPCC) with 17 years of experience. She helps people who feel stuck, stressed, or uncertain take practical steps toward clearer thinking and steadier days. Merry is direct and warm, and she focuses on helping clients manage anxiety and cope with life changes.
Her work often centers on relationship issues, grief and loss, low self-esteem, career concerns, and problems with sleep and anger.
Background and approach
She also supports people dealing with trauma, addiction, compassion fatigue, and the strain of parenting. Merry pays attention to how financial worries, isolation, or chronic illness can affect mood and daily function. Merry uses a mix of approaches to match each person’s needs.
She draws on cognitive behavioral techniques to spot and shift unhelpful thinking. She uses client-centered methods to build a respectful, nonjudgmental space. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice difficult feelings without getting stuck by them.
Her practice can include elements of dialectical behavior ideas for managing intense emotions and emotionally focused work for relationship struggles. She also brings an inclusive existential view that considers meaning, values, and spirituality when that matters to a person. Merry asks new clients to begin with a video session before switching to phone or messaging options later.
Sessions are provided in English and are intended to help people find realistic, day-to-day ways to feel better and move forward.
How therapy approaches map to online sessions
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice hard thoughts and feelings and then choose actions that match their values. Online ACT can be useful for anxiety, life transitions, and managing chronic stress by practicing small, values-based steps between sessions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thought patterns and trying new behaviors. Delivered over video or messaging, CBT works well for anxiety, sleep problems, and mood shifts through short exercises and homework. Client-Centered Therapy emphasizes a nonjudgmental, respectful relationship where the person sets the pace and topic of work. This approach helps people feel understood and can be used alongside skill-based methods.Merry treats finding the right approach as a team effort. She will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what has helped or not helped before. Together they decide which methods to try and adjust the plan as progress is made.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging, giving flexibility for different needs. Video is often used first for an in-depth intake, while phone or messaging can work better for quick check-ins, lower bandwidth, or short emotional support between longer sessions. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent around work, caregiving, or mobility limits.
Questions people ask
What concerns does Merry focus on?
How would she describe her therapy style?
What is her professional background?
What credential and region does she work from?
Which languages are available for sessions?
Can international clients work together?
What session formats are offered?
How does cost and scheduling work?
What this therapist works with
Most often
- Relationship issues
- Grief
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Career difficulties
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Parenting issues
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sleeping disorders
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 17 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English
We will earn a commission if you sign up through our link, at no cost to you.