About Marissa
Marissa Katz Bellani is a licensed mental health counselor who focuses on helping people manage anxiety, stress, grief, depression, and relationship strain. She works with people facing addiction, trauma, intimacy-related concerns, and challenges tied to identity such as LGBT issues. Marissa practices in Hawaii and offers services in English, including online options for international clients.
Her style is warm and interactive. Sessions are collaborative and grounded in everyday language. Marissa often blends client-centered listening with practical techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy.
Background and approach
She aims to meet people where they are and move at a comfortable pace. Marissa trained with a background that included expressive arts and music therapy during her graduate studies, and she brings that creative perspective into traditional counseling when it fits a person's needs. Over eight years of work and internship experience inform how she adapts methods for different concerns.
In sessions she helps people untangle relationship patterns, address family of origin issues, and approach attachment and communication challenges. She also supports caregivers, people coping with chronic illness or disability, and those processing end-of-life or hospice concerns. Her approach combines practical skills with attention to personal values and meaning.
People can expect straightforward tools they can use outside sessions, along with space to reflect on life changes, guilt, shame, and forgiveness.
Approaches that guide online sessions
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, focuses on values and committed action. It helps people notice hard thoughts and feelings while choosing actions that match what matters most. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT, breaks problems into thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and teaches concrete skills to change unhelpful patterns. Client-Centered Therapy centers the person’s own perspective and uses empathic listening to foster trust and growth.Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will talk with the person about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn’t helped before. Then she offers methods that match those needs and adjusts them over time in collaboration with the client.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for deeper exploration and practicing skills with direct feedback. Phone sessions can fit a shorter check-in or when internet bandwidth is limited. Live chat or text-based messaging work well for quick updates, brief coaching between sessions, or people who prefer writing to talking. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy days and to keep momentum between appointments.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
Also listed
- Addictions
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 8 years
- Licensed
- Massachusetts, Hawaii
- Languages
- English
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