About Lesley
Lesley Smith is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor (LCMHC) with 25 years of clinical experience in North Carolina. She focuses on practical, person-centered work that helps people manage stress, anxiety, mood problems, and major life shifts. Lesley uses straightforward language and encourages people to build on their existing strengths.
Her approach centers on helping individuals understand what matters to them and take small steps toward those values. She often blends acceptance-based strategies with cognitive tools to address unhelpful thoughts and patterns.
How Lesley works
Sessions aim to be collaborative and goal-oriented while staying grounded in each person's values. Lesley also addresses relationship concerns, communication problems, and commitment issues. She supports people dealing with grief, trauma and abuse, compassion fatigue, and caregiver stress.
Practical topics like career challenges, money and financial issues, body image, and life purpose are part of her work too. People who want clearer direction often find her coaching-style elements helpful for building confidence and motivation. She pays attention to attachment issues and how they shape relationships and emotional responses.
Lesley combines listening with concrete skills practice so people can try new approaches between sessions. Her practice uses multiple formats for contact, which makes fitting therapy into a busy life easier. Lesley explains options and helps people pick approaches that match their needs and preferences.
Lesley lists 13 ways of working on the entry:
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Gottman Method
- Imago Relationship Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
What Lesley works with
The areas below are the ones Lesley selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also listed
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Bipolar disorder
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self-love
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LCMHC |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 25 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | North Carolina |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
Using practical therapy approaches online
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people clarify what matters to them and take small, actionable steps toward those values while learning to accept difficult feelings. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing new behaviors to reduce anxiety and depressive patterns. Emotionally-Focused Therapy centers on emotions in relationships and can help people improve communication and attachment within important partnerships.Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will work with each person to weigh goals, preferences, and what feels most useful. Sessions can include skills practice, short experiments, and conversations about how to apply changes between meetings.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, offering flexible ways to connect. Video sessions are useful for deeper conversation and guided exercises. Phone sessions can be a good option when bandwidth is limited or a quieter check-in is needed. Live chat and text messaging allow brief check-ins, ongoing support, and quick coaching between longer sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into work, caregiving, and other daily responsibilities.
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Common questions
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A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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