About Melinna
Melinna Perez is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) practicing in California with ten years of clinical experience. She speaks English and Spanish and draws on a range of approaches to help people facing stress, anxiety, depression, eating concerns, grief, relationship and intimacy issues, and ADHD.
Melinna aims to make the first step feel manageable for worried parents and adults looking for steady support. She adapts her style to each person rather than using a single method for everyone.
Background and approach
Sessions often focus on practical skills people can try between meetings, and on understanding patterns that get in the way of daily life. Melinna emphasizes a person-centered stance - she listens closely and helps people find goals that feel meaningful to them.
Her background includes work in both in-person and online settings, and she has experience with trauma, mood disorders such as bipolar, and complex issues like body image and disordered eating. She also supports people navigating gender dysphoria, adoption and attachment concerns, and the stress that comes from caregiving and compassion fatigue.
In sessions she may use tools from cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy, among other approaches. Those tools are used to build coping skills, improve communication, and reduce overwhelming emotional reactions. Melinna keeps explanations direct and uses everyday language so parents can follow along easily.
Outside work she enjoys music, reading, cooking, and spending time with family and pets. She invites people to start with a brief questionnaire to match and then schedule a session when ready.
Approaches that fit into online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, focuses on clarifying values and taking small actions that matter to a person. It helps when worry or avoidance gets in the way of living the way someone wants. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches practical skills to change unhelpful patterns. It is often used for anxiety, depression, and some eating concerns. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, emphasizes emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills for intense emotional reactions and relationship challenges.Choosing the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will listen to your needs, goals, and preferences and then suggest which methods to try. That decision is collaborative and can be adjusted as therapy progresses so the plan fits day-to-day life.
Online sessions are offered as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy more flexible. Video lets people use face-to-face interaction for skill teaching and deeper conversation. Phone sessions can be shorter check-ins or a good option when bandwidth is limited. Text and chat formats allow frequent, brief check-ins and written exercises between sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy schedules and keep continuity when travel or time constraints arise.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Eating disorders
- Depression
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Divorce and separation
- Eating and food-related issues
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Experience
- 10 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English, Spanish
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