About Merle
Merle Montalvo is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) in Mississippi who helps people manage stress, anxiety, grief, depression, anger, and ADHD-related challenges. She draws on 23 years of experience to support people facing life changes, career concerns, relationship and family difficulties, and burnout or compassion fatigue.
She describes her own path into social work as a midlife shift, and she uses that perspective when people are rethinking goals or routines.
Background and approach
Merle values a straightforward, down-to-earth style in sessions. She aims to help people notice small changes that add up over time. Her background spans outpatient care, inpatient settings, intensive outpatient programs, home health, and hospice.
That variety informs how she matches approaches to different problems and stages of life. She is comfortable addressing complex histories such as trauma, loss, and mood disorders. Merle uses a mix of methods rather than one fixed model.
Common tools she brings include cognitive behavioral techniques, mindfulness practices, motivational interviewing, psychodynamic ideas, and solution-focused strategies. She adapts these to each person’s goals and pace. Sessions are practical and goal-minded.
Conversations often focus on clearer thinking, building coping steps, and small behavior changes. The aim is steady progress people can notice between sessions.
Approaches you can try in online sessions
Merle commonly uses cognitive behavioral techniques and mindfulness therapy in her online work. Cognitive behavioral approaches focus on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing small behavior changes to reduce anxiety, depression, and stress. Mindfulness therapy teaches simple attention and breathing practices to help people respond differently to strong emotions and improve daily focus.She also uses motivational interviewing to help people clarify goals and find their own reasons to change. That approach is useful when someone wants to make a lifestyle shift, tackle procrastination, or manage ADHD-related routines. Together you and she will decide which approaches fit your goals and preferences, and she will adjust methods as you try them out in sessions.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues, phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited, live chat offers a real-time text option, and messaging can be useful for brief check-ins or homework between meetings. These options make it easier to schedule sessions around work, caregiving, or travel while keeping therapy consistent.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Grief
- Anger management
Also listed
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Career difficulties
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Mood disorders
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 23 years
- Licensed
- Mississippi
- Languages
- English
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