Melissa Onappeau, LCSW

Melissa Onappeau is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with three years of experience offering therapeutic support through community and nonprofit organizations in Florida. She has worked with adolescents and adults coping with anxiety, stress, and life transitions, and she has experience supporting people who have experienced being unhoused.

Her approach is warm and conversational, favoring interactive dialogue that centers the client. Melissa combines a strength-based, client-led orientation with compassion, respect, and realistic goal setting to help clients identify practical steps forward. She focuses on building coping skills, improving self-esteem, and clarifying career and life purpose while addressing caregiver stress, forgiveness, multicultural concerns, self-love, social anxiety and phobia, women's issues, and workplace challenges. Melissa aims to empower clients through collaborative work and supports those ready to take their first step toward change.

Evidence-Informed Approaches for Online Support

Melissa uses a strength-based approach that highlights a person's existing resources and resilience. This method helps clients identify what is already working in their lives and build on those strengths to manage stress, anxiety, self-esteem concerns, caregiver burden, and workplace challenges. It emphasizes practical steps and empowerment rather than focusing only on problems.

She also employs client-led, collaborative techniques in which the person sets priorities and the therapist guides the process. This style supports realistic goal setting and action planning, which can be especially useful during life transitions, career decisions, or when addressing social anxiety and phobias. The emphasis is on measurable, manageable goals that reflect the client’s values and pace.

Finding the right approach is part of the therapeutic process, and Melissa will work with clients to determine what fits their needs, goals, and preferences. Online sessions by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging offer flexibility for busy schedules and varying comfort levels with communication. These options make it easier to access licensed professionals and therapists from different locations and to maintain continuity of care while balancing everyday responsibilities.