Therapy for Educators
Therapy for Teachers & Educators in North Carolina
You've had a student confide something devastating, and then you had to go teach the next period. You've stayed late to write one more IEP while your own family ate dinner without you. You've absorbed another policy change, another parent complaint, another budget cut, and showed up the next morning anyway.
Tracey Stracener, LCMHCS, was a high school counselor for more than eight years. She knows what this work costs from the inside. She offers therapy for educators via telehealth throughout North Carolina, including Saturday appointments for teachers who can't leave school to see a therapist.
Schedule a Free ConsultationFree 15-minute call · Saturdays available · Telehealth · North Carolina
She's Worked in Schools. She Gets It.
Therapy for teachers and educators addresses the specific mental health challenges of a profession defined by secondary trauma, chronic under-resourcing, and emotional labor without adequate support. Tracey Stracener, LCMHC-S, spent 8+ years as a school counselor, which means this therapy starts from professional understanding, not generic frameworks applied to education.
Tracey spent 8+ years as a high school counselor before becoming a therapist. That means she doesn't need an explanation of what it's like to be responsible for 400 students' emotional wellbeing while also managing scheduling, college recommendations, crisis intervention, mandated reporting, and a caseload that never stops growing.
She knows what it's like to have a student disclose abuse and then walk back into a classroom with 25 kids who need your full attention. She knows the particular loneliness of being the person everyone leans on, in a profession that rarely offers the same in return.
You shouldn't have to spend your therapy sessions educating your therapist about how schools work. With Tracey, you can skip that part.
What Educators Are Actually Dealing With
Administrative pressure without support
Policies that change constantly. Evaluations tied to metrics you can't fully control. Principals who need you to perform for observations while actual support is thin. The gap between what you're asked to do and what you're given to do it with.
The emotional labor of the job
Teaching is relational work. You care about your students. That care is real, and it takes something from you every day. The emotional cost of holding students' pain, excitement, frustration, and need is not factored into teacher preparation or compensation.
Being politically targeted
The current climate has made teaching in North Carolina (and elsewhere) feel precarious in ways that previous generations of teachers didn't face. Curriculum restrictions, political pressure, fear about what you can and can't say. The stress of navigating that while trying to do your actual job is real.
Chronic underpay
Financial stress doesn't stay at home. The specific strain of working in a profession you believe in that consistently fails to pay you fairly, while also demanding more, creates a particular kind of demoralization.
Secondary trauma from students
If you've worked in schools for any length of time, you have heard things you can't unhear. Students in crisis, disclosures of abuse, witnessing violence or loss in student communities. Secondary trauma is real and it accumulates. Educators rarely receive support for it.
Teacher Burnout Is Not Just Generic Burnout
General burnout frameworks (work harder, take more breaks, practice self-care) often fall flat for teachers. Not because self-care is wrong, but because the structural nature of teacher stress means individual coping strategies only go so far.
Teacher burnout has specific features: the loss of the idealism that brought you to the profession, the grief about not being able to do the job the way you know it should be done, the moral injury of being asked to operate in a system that fails kids. Therapy that understands those distinctions is more useful than therapy that doesn't.
Tracey works with educators on the full picture: what's systemic (and what you can't fix, but can grieve), what's internal (how you relate to the work, your sense of identity, your limits), and when burnout has crossed into something that needs more direct treatment, like trauma-focused therapy.
Secondary Trauma in Educators
Secondary traumatic stress (sometimes called compassion fatigue) develops when repeated exposure to others' trauma begins to affect your own nervous system. Intrusive thoughts about students you're worried about. Difficulty sleeping after a hard week. Emotional numbing as a way to keep going. Dreading Monday.
Tracey uses EMDR with educators who are carrying secondary trauma from school-related incidents: student deaths, crisis events, disclosures of abuse, witnessing violence. These experiences don't always get named as trauma, but they meet the clinical threshold, and they respond to trauma-focused treatment.
Why Online Therapy Works for Educators
Finding time for therapy as a teacher is its own obstacle. Driving to an office during the day means missing prep time or leaving early. Evening appointments fill fast. Weekends are for recovering.
Telehealth removes the commute. You can take a session from your car in the school parking lot, from home on a prep period, or on a Saturday morning before your day starts. Online therapy doesn't add one more errand to a schedule that already has no room.
Tracey offers Saturday appointments specifically for educators who can't make weekday scheduling work. Available anywhere in North Carolina via telehealth.
Fees, Insurance, and Availability
Sessions are covered by Aetna, NC State Health Plan, and BlueCross BlueShield of NC. Self-pay: $180 per session, $215 intake. Monday–Thursday 11AM–6PM, some Saturdays. Telehealth only, available anywhere in North Carolina. If your plan isn't listed, you may still have out-of-network benefits — Tracey provides a superbill after each session. Learn how out-of-network coverage works →
You Give a Lot. You Also Get to Have Support.
Schedule a free 15-minute call. Saturday appointments available. Tracey will get it. She already knows what the job is like.
Schedule a Free ConsultationAetna · NC State Health Plan · BCBS · Saturdays available · North Carolina