About Melissa
Melissa Pierce is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Texas with 20 years of experience. She focuses on helping people manage stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, addictions, relationship and intimacy concerns, and sleep difficulties. She aims to meet people where they are and to listen before offering direction.
Her sessions are collaborative and practical. She builds a plan that fits each person’s needs and goals rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach.
Background and approach
Conversations are direct but kind, and the pace is set by the person in therapy. Melissa uses body-focused work alongside talk therapy to help people notice how emotions show up in the body. She also draws on client-centered methods to keep the person’s priorities central.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps identify thought patterns that maintain distress, while Dialectical Behavior Therapy adds concrete skills for managing strong emotions. Across her work she addresses a wide range of concerns, including attachment and abandonment issues, body image, caregiving stress, chronic illness and pain, and coping after disaster. Her experience includes supporting LGBT concerns and helping people with intimacy and communication problems.
Sessions are offered in English and delivered in ways that fit modern life. Melissa tailors pace, homework, and techniques to each person’s comfort level. She encourages small steps and practical strategies to make daily life feel more manageable.
How Melissa blends approaches for online care
Melissa integrates Somatic Therapy with client-centered work to connect bodily experience and personal priorities. Somatic-informed work helps people notice physical sensations tied to stress or trauma and learn ways to regulate the body when emotions run high. Client-centered methods keep the conversation focused on what the person finds most important and create room for their voice in planning treatment.She also uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to identify unhelpful thinking patterns and practice new ways of responding. CBT is useful for anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, and many everyday problems where thoughts and behaviors interact. Together these approaches are chosen collaboratively during early sessions so the therapist and client can match methods to the client’s goals and comfort level.
Online therapy options include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging to make care easier to fit into busy lives. These formats offer flexibility for people juggling work, caregiving, or health concerns and let the therapist provide consistent support even when in-person visits are difficult. The therapist will help decide which format and approach are right as part of the first steps in care.
Frequently asked questions
What concerns does Melissa address?
What is her general approach in sessions?
How much clinical experience does she have?
What are her credentials and where does she practice?
Which languages are supported for sessions?
Can people from other countries book sessions?
What formats are available for online therapy?
How do sessions work and what do they cost?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Body image
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- Texas
- Languages
- English