About Mary
Dr. Mary Neal is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 26 years of clinical experience. She practices in North Carolina and draws on long experience helping people navigate relationship strain, trauma, and big life changes.
Her style is warm and down-to-earth. She keeps sessions focused and practical. She makes space for feelings while helping people build skills for everyday life.
Dr. Neal uses approaches that fit the person rather than a single method.
How Mary works
Sessions often include mindful exercises, looking at patterns in close relationships, and practical steps to change thoughts and behaviors. She encourages small experiments people can try between meetings. Many people seek her help for parenting stresses, low self-esteem, or recovery after abuse.
She also supports those facing abandonment, attachment concerns, adoption and foster care questions, and challenges tied to aging, caregiving, chronic illness, or disability. Her work addresses communication problems, commitment and control issues, codependency, dissociation, and avoidant or dependent personality patterns. She helps people build clearer boundaries and steadier coping habits.
Appointments are offered in multiple online formats and by phone. New clients start by completing a short matching questionnaire and scheduling an initial session that fits their needs.
Mary lists 13 ways of working on the entry:
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Attachment-Based Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Gottman Method
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems
- Systemic Therapy
What Mary works with
The areas below are the ones Mary selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Relationship issues
- Trauma and abuse
- Parenting issues
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Blended family issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Eating and food-related issues
- Emptiness
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fatherhood issues
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sex addiction
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | LMFT |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 26 |
| 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
How therapy approaches translate to online care
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy helps people notice thoughts and feelings without getting stuck in them. It focuses on values and taking small actions toward a life that matters, which can help with trauma, low self-esteem, and life transitions. Attachment-Based Therapy looks at patterns people form in close relationships and how those patterns affect current connections. It can be useful for attachment issues, abandonment concerns, and relationship strain. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy examines how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors interact and teaches practical skills to change unhelpful patterns and improve coping.Choosing the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will listen to your goals and try methods that match your needs. Together you will decide what feels most helpful and adjust as you learn what works.
Online therapy offers flexibility for busy schedules. Video calls let you have focused conversations with visual cues. Phone sessions are useful when less bandwidth or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat or text-based messaging can support people who prefer written exchanges or want brief check-ins between sessions. These options make it easier to fit therapy into daily life and keep momentum between meetings.
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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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