About Terri
Terri Ellerbe-Graves is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor (LCMHC) with 23 years in the helping field. She focuses on practical steps to reduce overwhelm and build skills. She speaks plainly and aims to make the first conversations feel manageable for a worried parent reading quickly on a phone.
She helps people develop coping strategies and set healthy boundaries. Sessions often focus on short-term skills you can use right away.
Background and approach
Terri also supports work on long-standing issues like trauma, grief, and relationship concerns in a steady, patient way. Her approach blends culturally informed, evidence-based methods to fit each person's needs. She draws from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy among other approaches.
The goal is practical change rather than jargon-filled explanations. Terri has experience with many concerns including stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD, sleep problems, parenting worries, intimacy and self-esteem struggles, and issues linked to trauma or loss. She also has worked with people facing complex situations such as chronic illness, adoption and foster care histories, attachment difficulties, and caregiving stress.
Located in North Carolina, she offers appointments that can match a busy family's schedule. The focus in early sessions is to understand immediate needs and to set clear, manageable steps forward. Over time the work adapts to meet changing goals and challenges.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online work
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps people notice difficult thoughts and feelings and then choose actions that matter to them. It is useful for anxiety, stress, and coping with life changes because it focuses on values and small, deliberate steps. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors interact and teaches specific tools to change unhelpful patterns. This approach often helps with anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and ADHD-related struggles. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) emphasizes emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and improved interpersonal skills, which can be helpful for intense emotions, relationship issues, and stress management.Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will discuss goals and preferences with each person and recommend methods that fit those aims. That collaborative process may include trying tools from different approaches and adjusting over time to see what helps most.
Online sessions can be arranged as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging to suit different needs. Video sessions let people use visual cues and a more conversational pace, phone sessions can work when bandwidth is limited, and chat or messaging can fit quick check-ins or shorter weekly touch points. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent around busy schedules and changing family demands.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- HIV / AIDS
- Hoarding
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Parenting issues
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Smoking / vaping cessation
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Traumatic brain injury
- Trichotillomania
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Existential Therapy
- Gottman Method
- Jungian Therapy
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Experience
- 23 years
- Licensed
- North Carolina
- Languages
- English
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