Welcome! I'm Melissa. Are you naturally introspective and seeking clarity on how to better understand yourself, your relationships and your inner world? Have you always wondered why you feel different or been questioned about being "too sensitive?" Have you had to deal with unique challenges in your life such as chronic pain, sensory or social difficulties, neurodiversity, or healing from relationships and friendships that felt one-sided or confusing to understand? I aim to provide a safe and empowering space to explore the questions about yourself that you have always wondered about. Due to our own life experiences, some of these questions and feelings may have been disregarded or pushed away by others or ourselves. As a neurodivergent therapist myself, I work with individuals who identify as highly sensitive, neurodiverse, and/or struggling to understand their relationship patterns. I will approach therapy with you from the mindset of being collaborative co-pilots. While I will guide you along your journey, I believe that you can play a powerful role in your own healing. For each individual I work with, I will always work to adapt to your own needs. I may implement a variety of techniques including neurodiversity-affirming techniques, parts work, acceptance and commitment therapy, behavioral experiments and mindfulness exercises. From time to time, I may recommend movies, articles or books to help solidify new knowledge and insights. As a clinician, I embrace authenticity, uniqueness and humor, as my priority is to help acknowledge that we are all human.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
In our first session together, I will do my best to make sure the session feels as comfortable as possible. I will be gathering some psychosocial background, and severity of past and present issues, but my hope is for this first session to feel like a back and forth conversation, where clients feel that they can ask questions as well. I will guide the structure of the session, but will welcome questions, feedback, etc. along the way. I will also be explaining a more in-depth approach to my therapy style and collaboratively identify areas of priority to work on. Goal setting usually occurs in the 2nd or 3rd session depending on information gathered.
What treatment methods and tools do you utilize?
I utilize and adapt methods and tools to the issue we are working on. If we are working on relationship and friendship patterns, we may identify and explore challenges through an attachment lens and learn about the tendencies of different attachment styles and how to develop a more secure attachment style. In addition, as I work with several highly sensitive clients, we will explore and learn how to honor and appreciate our uniqueness, how to communicate our unique needs to others in our lives and how to survive in a world that does not feel designed for the highly sensitive and/or neurodiverse. As a strength-based, psychodynamic clinician, I often utilize parts work to help us become more aware of deeply-engrained beliefs as well as visualizations to increase self-empowerment.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
My niche clients tend to be clients who identify as highly sensitive, neurodiverse and/or dealing with chronic pain/illness. My clients tend to be individuals who feel like they are "too sensitive" or in some way feel "different" than and/or less-abled than others. Many of my clients are also young adults and adults who care deeply about our state of the world and social justice issues.