About Melissa
Melissa Maaske is a licensed clinical social worker with ten years of experience helping people manage stress, anxiety, relationship strain, trauma, and low self-esteem. She is licensed in Minnesota as an LICSW and works in a straightforward, compassionate way. Melissa aims to make the first steps toward therapy feel doable and respectful.
Her approach blends body-focused work with talk therapy. She uses Somatic methods to help people notice how their body holds stress.
Background and approach
She also draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy to build practical skills for everyday life. Sessions focus on clear goals and small changes. Melissa helps people name what matters and practice new ways of coping.
She breaks things down into short, manageable steps so progress feels real and sustainable. She has experience supporting people with addiction, grief, identity questions, eating and body image concerns, and career or life transitions. Additional areas of focus include attachment and abandonment issues, blended family stress, caregiver strain, dissociation, and recovery from abuse.
Melissa conducts sessions in English and offers video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Therapy uses a subscription model that can be canceled at any time. To begin, users complete a short matching questionnaire and schedule appointments based on therapist availability.
Overall, Melissa's style is practical and warm. She aims to create a calm space for people to understand themselves better and take steps toward change.
How Somatic and Skills-Based Approaches Work Online
Somatic Therapy focuses on how the body stores stress and tension and uses gentle awareness of bodily sensations to support emotional change. It can help with anxiety, trauma responses, and challenges where emotions feel stuck. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and teaches concrete skills to shift unhelpful patterns and manage symptoms. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches practical tools for emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and clearer communication when relationships feel strained.Finding the right approach is part of the process. The therapist will work collaboratively to identify what fits a person’s goals, needs, and comfort level. That might mean trying somatic noticing alongside CBT skill practice, and adjusting the plan as goals change.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to connect. Video calls let people use visual and verbal cues, phone sessions provide a simpler option when video isn't possible, and live chat or text messaging allow for shorter check-ins and written practice between sessions. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and to keep momentum between meetings.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- Minnesota
- Languages
- English