Hi, I’m Melissa

A therapist who gets it and won’t just ask, “how does that make you feel?”

A therapist who gets it—and won’t just ask, “How does that make you feel?”

I’m Melissa, a Cincinnati-based Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, and for more than eighteen years I’ve been helping women understand themselves, their relationships, and the patterns they can’t seem to think their way out of.

I work primarily with women navigating the particular messiness of adulthood: changing identities, motherhood, relationships, careers, aging parents, complicated families, ADHD diagnoses that suddenly explain half your life, and the realization that being the person who can always handle everything is maybe not the prize you once thought it was.

My clinical specialties include high-functioning anxiety, perfectionism, ADHD and neurodivergence, trauma, people-pleasing, boundaries, and difficult family dynamics. I have a master’s degree in Clinical Counseling and am licensed to assess, diagnose and treat mental, behavioral and emotional disorders in Ohio, Arizona, and Minnestoa.

Professionally qualified. Personally familiar.

One of my favorite things to work on with women is what I think of as “good girl” conditioning: being agreeable, responsible, helpful, low-maintenance and very, very good at considering everyone else.

Essentially...being no trouble at all.

I may have some personal experience with this. :)

I’m an eldest daughter and neurodivergent myself, so a lot of what I talk about lives at the intersection of professional expertise and lived experience. I know what it's like to be highly capable on the outside while privately wondering why things that seem easy for everyone else can feel so damn hard.

That’s also why I’m particularly interested in women discovering their neurodivergence later in life. There can be enormous relief in finally having language for parts of yourself you’ve spent years interpreting as personal failures—and then figuring out who you are when you stop trying quite so hard to function like everyone else.

And I'm endlessly interested in what happens when women who've spent decades being capable and accommodating start asking different questions:

What do I actually want? Why am I so resentful? Why do I feel responsible for everyone's feelings? Why is saying no this hard? And who am I if I stop being the person everyone can count on for everything?

I like helping women make sense of all of it.

The person outside the therapy room

I live in the Cincinnati suburbs with my husband and our three kids, including twins. I spent my early childhood in California but somehow ended up an Ohioan.

Outside of work, I'm usually reading, playing tennis, working in the yard, trying to get better at Mahjong, driving someone somewhere, sitting on the sidelines of one kid’s or another’s, attempting to manage a household, spending time with people I love, or trying to have an actual life somewhere in between all of the above.

In other words, I'm not approaching this work from some perfectly regulated mountaintop.

I believe you can know a lot about mental health and still be a human person having a human life.

That's a big part of how I show up in my work, too. I take what I do seriously. I just don't believe that requires taking myself seriously all the time.

I’m glad you found your way here.

Come as you are. We’ll figure out the rest.

Credentials:

State of Ohio: Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC)

State of Arizona: Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)

State of Minnesota: Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)

Education:

Xavier University

Master of Arts, Clinical Counseling

Bachelor of Arts, Communications (Public Relations)

Professional Certifications & Memberships

Ohio Counselor & Social Worker Board

Ohio Counseling Association

American Counseling Association

The Sanctuary Model Trained