Melia Snyder is a Licensed Professional Counselor. She has worked in private practice, integrated care, wilderness, and community mental health settings. Melia has a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Appalachian State University and a Doctorate in Counselor Education and Supervision from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is licensed in Arkansas, Colorado, and North Carolina. She is a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist.

Melia’s practice primarily focuses on working with individual adults though she also has a depth of experience working with children, teens and families. Melia companions her clients in their journey of self-discovery and supports them in cultivating lives of meaning, connection, vitality and authenticity. The journey of being a human is not easy, especially in these times or uncertainty, division, and endless distraction. Melia offers a safe space for being and feeling, imagination and the re-enchantment of everyday life.

Melia’s therapeutic approach is rooted in Jungian Psychology, based on the work of Dr. Carl Jung. She also has extensive training and leadership experience in Expressive Arts Therapy and trauma-informed practice. Regardless of population or setting, Melia finds that presenting symptoms often tell a story and offer information and direction for moving forward. Through practices that access the unconscious such as dreamwork, creative expression and inquiry, and working with activated states of being, clients begin to listen and honor their own wisdom and knowing. Rather than taking direction from outside of oneself, clients learn how to listen, explore, relate and honor their own inherent wisdom and guidance. Beginning with a friendly knowing and tending of the inner landscape, healing and wholeness become possible as her clients cultivate the strength, resilience, and courage to risk knowing and becoming themselves.

Melia’s area of expertise includes:

• Grief and Loss 
• Co-occurring health issues
• Addiction recovery support 
• Women’s Issues
• Depression
• Spirituality and personal growth
• Anxiety
• Trauma 
• Life Transitions
• Relational and Family of Origin issues
• Dislocation and loneliness

Melia trains with the Heartland Association of Jungian Analysts and is a member of the NWA Friends of Jung. She enjoys reading, writing poetry, gardening, hiking, canoeing, cooking and playing with her two Great Pyrenees dogs.

“I consider therapy to be a tending and care of the Soul, indeed this is what the term actually means in its original Greek. I will meet you where you are and work alongside you in knowing, understanding, healing, loving, and becoming yourself. According to your own needs and inclinations, sessions may include practices such as dream work, ritual and ceremony, somatic and creative inquiry, spiritual integration, contemplative practice, nature-based connections, or ‘experiments’ to try on new ways of being. These approaches can act as a doorway to help you grow in self-awareness and awaken a spirit of creativity, agency, and possibility toward life. I engage in my own analysis, and highly value this approach as both a path toward healing and wholeness and a way of being in the world.”