About Melissa
Melissa Lehrich is a licensed clinical social worker who brings 25 years of experience to conversations about stress, anxiety, relationships and trauma. She focuses on practical steps people can use right away. Melissa aims to make the first step feel less daunting and more doable.
In sessions she listens closely and adapts each plan to the person in front of her. That might mean short-term skill building for panic or sleep problems, or a longer path for processing past hurt.
Background and approach
She works with common life pressures such as career strain, parenting stress, and coping with change. Melissa uses straightforward tools from cognitive behavioral approaches to help people notice and shift unhelpful thinking. She also draws on strategies from dialectical skills for emotion regulation and distress tolerance.
For people facing trauma, she offers methods meant to reduce the hold of painful memories. Her style is direct but caring, with an emphasis on clear goals and small, useful steps between sessions. Topics often include communication problems, boundaries and control issues, self-esteem and forgiveness work.
Melissa also supports people navigating grief, hospice or end-of-life questions. Sessions are offered in English and Melissa accepts clients who live in California as well as international clients. She works by matching approaches to each person’s needs and pacing work to what feels manageable.
A typical plan focuses on practical changes and measurable progress over time.
How Melissa’s approaches translate to online care
CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, looks at how thoughts, feelings and actions connect. Online CBT focuses on simple exercises to notice unhelpful thoughts and replace them with more balanced options, which can help with anxiety, sleep and low mood. DBT, or dialectical behavior therapy, teaches emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills. In remote sessions this can mean learning short grounding practices, paced breathing, and communication skills to use in heated moments. EMDR addresses painful memories by guiding attention while recalling distressing events. When used online it can help reduce the intensity of traumatic reactions and make memories less disruptive to daily life. Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with each person about goals and preferences, try a method for a few sessions, and adjust as needed. The aim is to fit the work to the person rather than force a single style. Online formats offer flexibility for people with busy schedules or travel constraints. Video calls allow for full sessions and visual cues. Phone sessions may be easier when bandwidth is limited. Live chat and text messaging are useful for brief check-ins, homework prompts, and ongoing support between longer sessions.Frequently asked questions
What concerns does she often help with?
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How much clinical experience does she have?
What are her credentials and location?
Do sessions take place in languages other than English?
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- 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