About Malissa
Malissa Monaghan is a licensed mental health counselor in New York who helps people facing stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship strain. She works with concerns such as grief, sleeping problems, parenting strain, bipolar mood shifts, and LGBT issues. Her style is calm and direct, focused on practical steps people can use between sessions.
With 25 years of experience, she draws on approaches that fit each person's needs rather than one fixed method.
Background and approach
Sessions often include skill-building for managing strong emotions and ways to change unhelpful thought patterns. She also addresses communication problems and workplace stress with clear tools for daily life. Malissa pays attention to family dynamics, fatherhood questions, and the challenges of young adulthood and isolation.
She offers straightforward help for guilt, shame, and control issues, and supports people dealing with co-morbidity and post-traumatic stress. Conversations aim to increase insight and reduce daily overwhelm. Her work is client-centered and collaborative.
People can expect a mix of talking through history and learning specific skills to cope with symptoms or conflicts. Progress is practical and paced to each person’s tolerance. Background and approach include using cognitive behavioral techniques to shift patterns of thinking, dialectical behavior strategies to manage intense emotions, and solution-focused steps to set short-term goals.
Psychodynamic ideas may be drawn on to clarify recurring relationship themes. The aim is steady, manageable change that fits the person’s life.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and responding to each person’s needs. The therapist creates space for people to tell their story and helps them identify what feels most important to change or understand. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, teaches specific skills to notice and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors; it is often used for anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and workplace stress.Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will discuss goals, try methods that match those goals, and adjust the plan as work proceeds. This helps ensure sessions stay relevant to what the person wants to accomplish and respects personal pace and preferences.
Online therapy offers flexibility for different schedules and situations. Video calls let people work face-to-face from wherever they are, phone sessions can fit into a short break or require less bandwidth, and live chat or text messaging allow for brief check-ins and ongoing support between meetings. These options make it easier to use therapy tools consistently over time.
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
Also works with
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Co-morbidity
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Mood disorders
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Relationship issues
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- New York
- Languages
- English