About Terri
Terri Chester, LCMHC, helps people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and ADHD-related struggles. She also supports people facing grief, trauma, relationship strain, career shifts, and major life transitions. Her style is practical and steady, aimed at finding everyday ways to cope and move forward.
Terri has worked in counseling for 31 years. Her experience includes public schools, community colleges, university settings, mental health agencies, independent practice, and wilderness therapy programs. She holds a master’s degree in counseling from Appalachian State University and an advanced certificate in expressive arts therapy.
Background and approach
Her approach is client-centered and strength-based. She treats therapy as a collaboration and acts as a sounding board and resource. Sessions focus on building on existing strengths and finding new ones that fit the client’s life.
Terri uses talk-based methods alongside practical techniques. Cognitive and cognitive-behavioral strategies are combined with mindfulness, expressive arts, body-centered methods, or Gestalt-style activities when helpful. The aim is to teach coping skills, emotion regulation, decision-making, and problem-solving.
Work in sessions often looks like identifying clear goals, practicing skills, and planning steps toward change. She also helps people process grief and past or recent trauma in manageable ways. Terri emphasizes self-care, increased self-awareness, and practical planning to support growth.
People seeking help for anxiety, anger, addiction concerns, compassion fatigue, or life transitions will find a clinician who offers varied tools and steady support. The focus is on useful steps that can be tried between sessions to ease daily strain.
Approaches used and how they fit into online work
Terri commonly blends client-centered work with cognitive behavioral techniques. Client-centered Therapy focuses on listening, validation, and building on a person’s strengths so they can make their own choices. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps identify unhelpful thinking and teaches practical skills to change behavior and emotional responses. These approaches are useful for anxiety, depression, ADHD-related struggles, and coping with life transitions.She also draws on Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills when emotional regulation and distress tolerance are priorities. DBT offers concrete skills for managing intense feelings, improving interpersonal effectiveness, and reducing impulsive behaviors. The therapist will work with each person to decide which tools fit best; choosing an approach is a collaborative process based on needs, goals, and preferences rather than a fixed plan.
Online formats make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and use of worksheets or shared materials. Phone sessions work well when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging can support brief check-ins, coaching-style prompts, or ongoing skill practice between sessions. These options increase flexibility so people can try techniques and apply them in daily life.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
Also listed
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Post-traumatic stress
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Somatization
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 31 years
- Licensed
- North Carolina
- Languages
- English
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