Melissa Guarnaccia , LISW-CP, LCSW

Melissa Guarnaccia is a psychotherapist based in North Carolina with eleven years of clinical experience working with children, adolescents, and adults across hospital, school, and private practice settings. She brings training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Solution-Focused Therapy to help people address anxiety, depression, relationship concerns, family conflict, parenting challenges, grief, trauma, and other life stressors.

Melissa combines a relaxed, open-minded, and nonjudgmental counseling style with an action-oriented approach that supports practical change. She enjoys collaborating with families on parenting issues and offers community workshops as a certified instructor in Parenting with Love & Logic. Her background includes hands-on experience supporting individuals through relationship and intimacy-related difficulties, self-esteem and career concerns, bipolar mood management, eating and anger issues, and the impacts of abuse and loss.

She holds professional social work credentials - LISW-CP and LCSW - with LISW-CP indicating a license for independent social work with clinical practice and LCSW standing for Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Melissa earned a BA in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Social Work from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Originally from Charlotte, she is married and a mother of two boys and a pug named Mabel, and she and her family enjoy outdoor activities and cultural travel.

Therapeutic Approaches and Online Support

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) encourages clients to identify personal values and take committed action toward those values while learning to make space for difficult thoughts and feelings. In practice, ACT can help people who are struggling with anxiety, depression, grief, or life transitions by clarifying what matters most and building psychological flexibility.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying and adjusting unhelpful patterns of thinking and behavior. CBT is often used for anxiety, mood difficulties, and stress-related problems by teaching practical skills for managing symptoms and changing routines that maintain distress.

Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. Melissa works with clients to explore which methods align with their goals, preferences, and needs, and she adapts treatment over time as progress and challenges emerge. Therapists work together with clients to tailor strategies rather than applying a single formula.

Online therapy offers practical flexibility - sessions may be scheduled as video calls, phone appointments, live chat meetings, or ongoing text-based messaging. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives, access care from home or work, and maintain continuity of support when in-person visits are impractical. Licensed professionals can use these formats to deliver the same structured techniques and collaborative planning typically used in face-to-face care.