Terri Ellerbe-Graves, LCMHC

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 stress, manage anxiety, and address trauma and abuse. Her style aims to make hard conversations feel manageable and straightforward. If you are worried, overwhelmed, or trying to cope with big life changes, she helps people build skills that fit their day-to-day lives.

She works with a wide range of concerns including depression, anger, grief, relationship and intimacy issues, parenting stress, sleep problems, self-esteem, bipolar disorder, and ADHD. Additional focus areas include attachment and abandonment issues, adoption and foster care challenges, caregiver stress, chronic illness and pain, body image, and blended family dynamics. Terri uses clear strategies to help people set boundaries and create coping plans.

Her approach draws on practical therapies such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy, along with attachment-based and client-centered methods. Sessions emphasize skill building, realistic goals, and steady progress rather than jargon or abstract concepts.

Terri aims to make the therapy room a place without judgment. She encourages open talk about trauma, difficult feelings, and things that feel shameful. The focus is on safety, honesty, and concrete steps forward.

To begin, prospective clients follow the site's matching process and schedule sessions based on availability. She practices in North Carolina and conducts work in English.

Therapeutic approaches and online care

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) encourages people to notice painful thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them, then choose actions that match their values. It can help with anxiety, stress, and coping with life changes. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at unhelpful thinking patterns and builds practical skills to change behaviors and mood, which is often useful for depression, anxiety, and sleep issues. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) teaches emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal skills to manage intense feelings and improve relationships.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. Terri will collaborate with each person to pick methods that match their needs, goals, and preferences. That means trying things, checking what helps, and adjusting the plan together rather than assuming one method fits everyone.

Session formats are not listed in the biography, so confirm current options before booking. Online therapy can make it easier to fit sessions into a busy life by removing travel time and allowing shorter check-ins when needed. It also lets people choose settings that reduce distractions, use video when helpful, or rely on phone check-ins for lower bandwidth. Licensed professionals can adapt techniques like ACT, CBT, and DBT to online work so that skill building and coping strategies continue between sessions.