Melissa Hurt
Compassionate social work approach to change
- Credentials
- LICSW
- Experience
- 3 years
- Licensed in
- Minnesota
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Melissa
Melissa Hurt is a licensed clinical social worker (LICSW) based in Minnesota. She draws on a social work background to look beyond symptoms and see how systems, culture, and personal history shape someone's life. Melissa emphasizes compassion, practical support, and honest feedback when she meets someone seeking change.
She earned a master’s degree in social work and then pursued clinical licensure as an LICSW. Before moving into clinical practice she spent years in disability services supporting teams of social workers and learning how systems affect daily life.
Background and approach
That experience informs how she listens and responds in sessions. Melissa uses a blend of approaches focused on what helps a person move forward. She often incorporates Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Emotionally-Focused Therapy, and elements of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy alongside mindfulness and motivational interviewing.
Her aim is to find simple, realistic steps clients can try between meetings. Her interests include stress, anxiety, depression, grief, trauma and abuse, addictions, parenting, intimacy-related issues, and identity-related concerns including LGBT matters. She also notes experience with caregiver stress, chronic illness, aging issues, and blended family challenges.
Melissa describes herself as strengths-focused and creative. She likes to name practical options, coach small habit changes, and help people notice what’s working. Sessions are collaborative and built around each person’s goals and life context.
How Melissa’s Approaches Work Online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on clarifying personal values and taking small meaningful steps even when hard feelings are present. It helps people move toward what matters instead of getting stuck avoiding discomfort.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches practical skills to test and change unhelpful patterns. It is useful for anxiety, depression, stress, and coping with life changes.
Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT) helps name and work with emotions in the moment, which can ease painful patterns tied to relationships and intimacy concerns.
Choosing the right approach is part of therapy. A licensed professional will talk with each person about needs and goals and will try a few methods to see what fits best. This is a collaborative process where the therapist and client adjust strategies over time.
Online sessions can take place by video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to fit different schedules and preferences. These options make it easier to keep regular meetings, try brief check-ins between sessions, and access support from home or work. Many people find the variety of formats helps therapy stay practical and doable.
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.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
Attends to the emotions underneath a recurring argument or distance, and to the attachment needs driving them. Often used where a relationship keeps returning to the same painful loop.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- 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
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- 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
- 3 years
- Licensed
- Minnesota
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Melissa
- Takes a few minutes to look through
- Nothing to set up just to read
- Stop at any point