Melanie Reyes
Calm, practical therapy for life challenges
- Credentials
- LMFT
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed in
- California
- Languages
- English, Tagalog
- Format
- Online sessions
About Melanie
Melanie Reyes is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, grief, trauma and abuse, and parenting challenges. She brings a calm, steady presence and listens carefully to what feels most urgent. Sessions aim to reduce overwhelm and restore hope so people can take the next practical steps in their lives.
Melanie uses straightforward, practical methods that honor each person's experience. She combines client-centered therapy with mindfulness and EMDR when trauma is involved.
Background and approach
Conversations focus on what feels stuck right now and on building skills people can use between sessions. Her style is warm and accepting. She encourages people to notice small shifts and to try new coping tools gradually.
Motivational interviewing is used when someone needs help finding their own motivation for change. The approach is collaborative and paced to each person’s readiness. Melanie has 12 years of clinical experience and holds a California Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist credential - CA LMFT 92642.
She offers sessions in English and Tagalog and practices in California. Her background includes work with issues such as addiction, sleep problems, self-esteem, career concerns, bipolar disorder, and compassion fatigue. When trauma is part of the story, Melanie integrates EMDR and psychodynamic ideas to help process painful memories and patterns.
She also brings attention to body awareness and mindfulness to reduce stress and improve coping. The aim is steady, practical progress toward clearer thinking and better day-to-day functioning.
Therapeutic approaches suited to online care
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and following the person's lead. It helps people feel heard and safe to talk about what matters most, and it works well for stress, anxiety, and relationship concerns.Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, is a trauma-informed method that helps process disturbing memories. In practice it involves guided attention and memory work to reduce the emotional charge of past events, and it can be used when trauma symptoms are present.
Mindfulness therapy teaches simple attention and breathing practices to reduce reactivity and improve coping with strong emotions. It is often paired with other approaches to help people notice thoughts and sensations without getting overwhelmed.
Finding the best approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with each person about goals, symptoms, and preferences, then recommend one or a combination of methods. Together they check progress and adjust the plan as needed so the work feels relevant and manageable.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation from home, while phone sessions can be used when video is not possible. Live chat and text-based messaging provide shorter, more frequent check-ins or support between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy schedule and to access licensed professionals from different locations.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
EMDR
A structured protocol used with distressing memories, pairing recall with guided attention tasks. Some therapists adapt it for video sessions; whether that fits is worth asking about directly.
Mindfulness Therapy
Attention training: noticing thoughts and physical feelings as they arrive without being carried off by them. Much of it is practice you do yourself, so guidance over video or audio works much as it would in person.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 12 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English, Tagalog
Next step
Talk to Melanie
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point