Melissa Harris
Calm, practical support for stressful family times
- Credentials
- LPC
- Experience
- 8 years
- Licensed in
- Tennessee
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Melissa
Melissa Harris is a Licensed Professional Counselor with eight years of experience working from Tennessee. She focuses on practical help for people feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, grief, or major life changes. Her work also addresses relationship and intimacy concerns, parenting challenges, addictions, and mood-related difficulties such as depression and bipolar symptoms.
She uses clear, straightforward conversations to help people name what’s hard and try small, realistic changes. Sessions emphasize steady skills building and emotional understanding rather than jargon or one-size-fits-all answers.
Background and approach
Melissa aims to make therapy feel manageable, even when problems seem big. Her background includes training in several evidence-based methods like cognitive behavioral strategies and acceptance-focused work. She draws on attachment ideas to look at how early relational patterns affect current reactions.
Dialectical and client-centered approaches inform how she helps clients regulate emotions and feel heard. Therapy with her typically involves setting short-term goals, practicing new ways to cope, and reviewing what works between sessions. She pays attention to practical problems such as communication, parenting stress, workplace strain, and addiction-related challenges.
Melissa frames progress as small steps that add up. Sessions are offered in English and she accepts international clients. Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging.
To begin, a simple intake and scheduling step connects a person to the right appointment time.
Therapeutic approaches that translate well to online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them. It focuses on identifying personal values and taking small actions that align with those values, which can help with anxiety, depression, and life transitions.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at patterns of thinking and behavior that keep problems going. It uses simple exercises and homework to try out new reactions to stress, worry, or low mood, and works well for anxiety, depression, and many everyday struggles.
Attachment-Based Therapy pays attention to how early relationship patterns shape current responses. It helps people understand how they relate to others and practice different ways of connecting, which can be useful for intimacy and communication problems.
Finding the right approach is a shared process. The therapist will talk with each person about their needs, goals, and preferences and adjust methods over time. That collaboration helps tailor sessions so they feel useful and relevant.
Online therapy offers practical benefits like flexibility and easier access to regular sessions. Video calls let people work face to face from home, while phone, live chat, and text messaging provide alternatives for shorter check-ins, skill coaching, or when a video session is not possible. These options make it simpler to keep progress steady around busy schedules.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Less about arguing with difficult thoughts, more about loosening their grip and acting on what matters to you anyway. Values and committed action carry the work, which suits conversation at a distance.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Looks at how early bonds shaped what you expect from closeness, and how that plays out now with a partner, a parent, or your own children.
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.
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of concerns does this therapist address?
What is her therapeutic style like?
How long has she been practicing?
What are her credentials and where is she based?
Which languages are supported and are international clients accepted?
What session formats are available?
How does pricing work for sessions?
How do I get started with scheduling?
Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Cancer
- 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
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- 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
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trichotillomania
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Systemic Therapy
- Experience
- 8 years
- Licensed
- Tennessee
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Melissa
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point