Melissa Newman
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. With over 23 years of experience working with individuals and families struggling with a wide variety of obstacles, My ideal client is a parent or couple who is struggling to parent their children in a way that feels both effective and enjoyable.
I specialize in grief and loss, stress management, anger management, parent/caregiver support, employment-related issues, and issues related to attachment and family of origin.
This might be due to behavior health struggles in the family, grief and loss, trauma or family conflict. My passion revolves around helping others to develop to their fullest potentials and I believe that utilizing individuals' strengths and personal experiences is the best way to help them successfully make positive, lasting changes in their lives and the lives of their families.
First session
In my first session with clients, I prefer to discuss current struggles or places where they feel stuck as well as where they would prefer to be and times in their lives when clients felt less stuck or was able to overcome these struggles. These often become the goals that are the focus for the initial stages of therapy. I typically complete a full biopsychosocial assessment in the first session to ensure that all areas of the client and their life is included when identifying strengths, limitations and goals. Within the first 1-2 sessions, I work with each client to develop a treatment plan to follow throughout treatment as the client and I work to find solutions to the problems that brought them in for therapy.
Strengths
My approach is built upon establishing a collaborative working relationship with each person who decides to see me for therapy. I use a solution-focused approach where I respect each individual as the expert on their own life and experiences. I lend my experience in working with a variety of people from a variety of backgrounds to develop a plan that will allow each individual to reach their fullest potential. I specialize in grief and loss, stress management, anger management, parent/caregiver support, employment-related issues, and issues related to attachment and family of origin. With a background in structural-strategic family therapy, I am able to zoom in to help each person explore their own internal experiences as well as zoom out to inspect the external forces that act upon them to address seeking solutions to life's challenges in a holistic way.
Ideal clients
I enjoy working with adults who are seeking answers to questions or solutions to problems that they are encountering in their lives. I most enjoy career counseling, helping others learn mindfulness and skills to help manage their emotions and assisting parents, especially parents of children with their own struggles. I love working with people who are ready to make a lasting change in their lives, but I am also skilled at working with people who aren't sure if they are ready to change. I have 13 years of experience working with people with severe and persistent mental illnesses, including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.
Origin story
When I worked with at-risk youth in an emergency shelter residential program, I was able to sit down to talk with children/teens and their parents about the struggles they were having. What I kept hearing is that the children/teens would be sent to various program or residential facilities, where they would often receive help and begin to do better. Upon returning home, however, parents and children/teens would often regress back to their old patterns and would struggle to break the cycle of returning home, struggling again, and the child/teen subsequently entering another placement/treatment. When I started working with parents and children to identify programs that would allow them to work together and that would provide support to parents as well as to the children/teens, I found that families were able to take what they learned back home with them and work together with the treatment team to support the child/teen. This greatly reduced the return to placement rate for children/teens and solidified my passion for helping parents to have the best possible outcomes with their children.
Ongoing work together
Our ongoing work together will be very much based upon the treatment plan that we have developed together in the first to second sessions. We will write goals that you feel like will help you achieve what you are looking to improve or change in your life and that I feel like are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based. For example, if your goal is to reduce symptoms of depression, we might state that your scoring on the depression index sent out periodically by Grow would indicate a reduction from your intake score to a lesser number that feels achievable within a certain time period, like 3 months or six months. We would then focus on these goals each time we meet until we reach all of your goals. I would also be checking in with you through the therapist alignment inventory that Grow sends you and via direct conversations in session to make sure that you feel like we are on the right track and working on the things that you came to therapy to address.
Treatment methods
Solution-Focused Brief Treatment
I utilize Solution Focused Brief Treatment to help clarify what problems you are facing and what solutions/goals you would like to implement/achieve. This helps me work with you to develop treatment plan goals and track progress toward goals. SFBT was the first modality of therapy that I learned as I gravitated toward the idea of working collaboratively with you to utilize your expertise in being you and my experience in working with others with similar struggles to help you find solutions utilizing your strengths and past experiences.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
I utilize CBT techniques to help you achieve your goals when they involve changing the ways you think or react to thoughts. I have utilized this evidenced-based treatment method to help people struggling with depression, mood disorder, and anxiety disorders for 17 over years.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
I have been using DBT techniques for 10+ years to help people who struggle with being in the moment without fixating on the past or the future, those who struggle with emotional regulation, those who struggle with tolerating distress, and those who struggle with being effective in interactions with others. DBT, which is a practice that has been studied and determined to be beneficial in helping most people, is especially effective for people with anxiety disorders, personality disorders and severe and persistent mental illness. Often, when clients have tried therapy from several approaches without success, DBT is a modality that help bring about change.
Exposure Response Prevention (ERP)
I have been using Exposure Response Prevention for the past five years, primarily in my work with those who struggle with symptoms of obsessions or compulsions, including counting, checking, handwashing, ect. This evidenced-based practice helps people to reduce their anxiety responses to triggers, which may include the obsessions, compulsions or irrational thought patterns.
Attachment-based
I utilize the concepts of Attachment-based therapy to help you explore the ways that your attachment style formed in childhood in relation to your primary caregiver(s) and how that attachment style is affecting your current relationships. Often, when we have been parented in ways that did not promote close, loving, safe relationships, we grow up to have patterns of inconsistent, conflictual, and sometimes even toxic relationships with others in our adult years. Addressing the lack of safe, secure connection in childhood can help people to understand why their relationship struggles have happened and can provide a healing, corrective experience inside of the therapy sessions. I have been interested in and practicing Attachment Therapy for over 19 years.
Location
Virtual sessions
Identifies as
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Licensed in
- PennsylvaniaLicense PC006855