Therapist in Cary, NC | Anxiety and Depression Counseling

Our North Carolina office is at 150 Preston Executive Drive, Suite 201, in Cary, off Cary Parkway near the Preston area. In-person times at the Cary office are currently full, so new clients start with our North Carolina-licensed therapists by secure video anywhere in the state, from the Triangle out to the coast and the mountains. For skills-based work on emotion regulation, our DBT therapy in Cary page covers that work.

Looking for a therapist in Cary? Get in touch or check your insurance. We offer individual therapy, couples therapy, teen therapy and family therapy in Cary and by telehealth across North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, New York and Tennessee, and in six more states. Call (984) 201-0494.

The Cary Office

150 Preston Executive Drive, Suite 201, Cary, NC 27513. There is parking on site and it is a straightforward drive from Apex, Morrisville, Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina, north Raleigh and Research Triangle Park, with Durham and Chapel Hill reachable without much trouble.

In-person times at the Cary office are currently full, so new clients start by secure video, which covers all of North Carolina. If being in a room matters to you, say so when you call and we will let you know when in-person times open up.

Individual Therapy in Cary

The Triangle has a particular version of a common problem. A lot of the people who call us are doing well by every external measure — the job in RTP or at one of the universities, the house, the schools they moved here for — and are quietly running on empty. Nothing has gone wrong. They are just tired in a way that sleep does not fix.

Some of that is burnout rather than depression, and the distinction matters because the treatment differs. Burnout is what happens when demand stays high for long enough that recovery stops working, and it is not fixed with a better morning routine. It usually involves looking squarely at the demand, which is the part people book therapy to avoid doing. We wrote about this specifically in stress and burnout in Cary.

We also work with anxiety, depression, grief, anger and life transitions. Where medication would help, Gina Ashman, MSN, MHA, PMHNP-BC, offers medication management by secure video (not in person at the Cary office), and if you already have a prescriber, we can coordinate with them so that therapy and medication work together rather than separately.

Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety here often arrives well disguised as competence. The work gets done, the calendar is full, nobody around you would guess. Underneath is a nervous system that has not properly been off in months and a set of small avoidances that have quietly narrowed your life.

Treatment is not simply talking about it. It is changing the loop between what you predict, what your body does and what you then avoid, because the avoidance is what keeps the prediction alive.

Depression gets missed for longer because it is quieter. It rarely announces itself as sadness — more often flatness, irritability, sleeping badly, and gradually dropping the things you used to look forward to. Treatment usually starts with behavior rather than thought, because waiting to feel like doing something is how depression keeps its footing.

Couples and Marriage Counseling

Couples work is a large part of what this office does, and we have a separate page on marriage counseling in Cary that goes into it properly.

The short version: it draws on skills from the Gottman Method and on attachment-focused work rather than open-ended conversation. Attachment-focused work looks at the attachment cycle underneath a repeating argument. Gottman Method work suits couples whose pressing problem is how they fight. If you are not sure you want to stay at all, discernment counseling is built for exactly that point.

What Brings People in Cary to Therapy

Four things come up often enough here to name.

Work that never closes. RTP and the universities run on projects with no natural end, and remote or hybrid work has removed the commute that used to mark the boundary. People describe checking messages at eleven not because anyone asked but because the day never officially ended.

Two-career households with young children. The logistics are relentless and the division of labor was usually decided by default in the first few weeks rather than agreed. Resentment accumulates in a currency of small unacknowledged tasks. We wrote about that specifically in the mental load.

Caring for parents at a distance. A lot of people here moved for work and now manage an aging parent by phone from several states away, with siblings who disagree about what should happen. That is a genuine grief and it rarely gets treated as one.

The high-achieving teenager. Straight A grades, full schedule, and a level of anxiety that the results conceal. Parents often bring them in after a physical symptom appears rather than an emotional one.

Therapy by Video Across North Carolina

A good share of our North Carolina clients never come to Cary. Sessions run by secure video anywhere in the state, which matters if you are in Charlotte, Greensboro, Wilmington, Asheville or somewhere without a therapist within an hour’s drive.

It is the same clinicians and the same work. What it removes is the drive, the waiting room and the childcare problem, which for a lot of people is the difference between starting and not starting.

Teens, Children and Families

Wake County schools are competitive and the pressure lands early. A fair number of the teenagers we see are performing well and not coping, which is a combination parents often do not spot until something gives.

Teen therapy works best when the young person has some ownership of it, and we say that to parents directly. A teenager brought in to be fixed will sit through sessions and change nothing. What we can do is give them a room that is theirs, keep you appropriately informed, and be honest about what is developmentally ordinary versus what needs attention. For younger children we work through child and adolescent counseling and, often more usefully, parenting support — with a young child, changing what happens at home tends to do more than the child’s own hour does.

Where the strain runs through the household rather than one person, family therapy is the better container. Blended families working out whose rules apply are a common reason to call.

A Note on Moving Here

The Triangle is full of people who arrived in the last few years, and relocation is an underrated stressor. You have the job and the house and no one to call on a bad Tuesday. Your old friendships are on a different clock. If you moved as a couple, one of you probably has a ready-made social world through work and the other does not, and that gap does quiet damage.

This is not a diagnosis and it is a completely legitimate reason to see someone.

Apex, Morrisville and the Towns Around Cary

The Preston Executive Drive office sits close enough to Apex that most people are here inside fifteen or twenty minutes, and the same is true of Morrisville, Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina. If you live in one of them and have been searching for counseling in your own town without finding much, that is usually because the practices are clustered in Cary and Raleigh rather than because nothing is available to you.

There is a pattern to what brings people in from these towns, and it is worth naming because it is rarely what anyone expects to be struggling with. They have grown fast. A large share of the people living in them arrived within the last few years, for a job at Research Triangle Park or for the schools. The house is bigger than the one before it and the commute is better and by every measurable standard the move was correct — and the person who moved has no one to call on a Tuesday, a partner who is working the hours the new job demanded, and a growing suspicion that something is wrong with them for not being happier about it. Nothing is wrong with them. That is what relocation does, and it is treatable.

The rest is what you would expect from towns full of young families: couples work after a second child, teenagers who moved schools at the worst possible age, and the high-functioning kind of anxiety that holds up fine at work and comes apart at home.

The practical answer is that the drive is optional. Everything we do in the Cary office is also available by secure video anywhere in North Carolina, and a good number of our Apex and Holly Springs clients have never been to the office. In-person times are currently full, so new clients start by video; we can tell you when in-person times open up when you get in touch.

Trauma Therapy and EMDR

Our clinicians work from a trauma-informed frame, and we offer EMDR alongside the wider approaches set out on our trauma, PTSD and EMDR page. EMDR does not require you to describe the event in detail, which is often what makes it possible for people who have found talking about it impossible. In North Carolina, EMDR is with Lisa Abrotsky, LMFT, by secure video.

Stabilization comes first. Rushing that is the most common way trauma work goes badly.

Insurance and Getting Started

Coverage varies by plan more than by state. Check your benefits or call (984) 201-0494 and we will look it up with you. In-person times in Cary are currently full, so new clients start by secure video.

Common Questions

Do you see clients in Raleigh and Durham?

Yes, by secure video, which covers all of North Carolina. Couples can read more on our page about couples therapy in Raleigh.

Do you see clients from Apex and Morrisville?

Regularly, by secure video. In-person times at the Cary office are currently full. There is no separate waiting list or different rate depending on which town you are in.

How soon can I be seen?

Most new clients are seen within a week by secure video. In-person times in Cary are currently full.

Do you offer evening or early appointments?

Some clinicians do and those slots go quickly. If your work pattern makes daytime impossible, say that when you call rather than after you have been offered one.

Can I bring my partner to some sessions but not all?

Yes, and it is common. Individual work with occasional joint sessions is a legitimate structure, though we will be clear at the outset about what is confidential and what is not, so nobody is guessing.

What if I do not know what is wrong?

That is a normal place to start. The first session is largely about working out what the problem actually is, which is often not what you booked for. If we are not the right fit, a referral to someone better suited is a good outcome, not a failure.

Where We Work

We see clients by secure telehealth in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee. In-person appointments are offered at our Cary office at 150 Preston Executive Drive (currently full; new clients start by video) and at our Wellington, Florida office. You can see our clinicians and the states each is licensed in, or check your insurance before you call.

More on This

We also work with service members, veterans and military families across the Triangle. See therapy for veterans and military families.

Therapist in Cary, NC: Anxiety, Depression and Family Therapy