she/her
Dr. Crissa Allen
PhD, LCMHC, NCC
Therapy for high achievers who are ready to stop living by everyone else's expectations and feel more at home in their own lives.
🟢 Accepting clients
Adults
Couples Therapy | Individual Therapy
Crissa Allen, PhD, LCMHC, NCC, provides online therapy for adults and couples navigating anxiety, burnout, life transitions, relationships, self-esteem, identity, and the pressure to keep achieving while feeling like something is still missing.
Meet with Crissa
Free 15-minute phone consultation · Eastern Time
Statewide telehealth in North Carolina
$200 per session
Limited sliding scale fees available
Therapy for High Achievers Who Still Feel Like Something Is Missing
You’ve built a life that may look pretty successful from the outside. You show up, meet expectations, take care of other people, and keep moving toward the next thing you’re supposed to accomplish. But somewhere along the way, you started wondering whether the life you’re working so hard to maintain actually feels like yours.
Maybe you’re entering a new stage of life, trying to find your people, building or repairing a relationship, questioning who you are, or feeling worn down by expectations you’ve carried for years. You may know how to think your way through almost anything and still struggle to understand what you’re feeling or what you actually want.
Crissa works with adults and couples who are curious about what their lives could become. Therapy creates space to sort through the expectations, relationships, beliefs, identities, and patterns you’ve accumulated so you can decide what genuinely belongs to you, and what you’re ready to leave behind.
I help people with
Approaches I use
My Approach to Therapy
Crissa’s approach has been described as warm, freeing, gentle, and supportive. She understands that you are more than a collection of symptoms. Your relationships, spirituality, values, childhood experiences, culture, body, emotions, and intersecting identities all help shape who you are and how you move through the world.
Her work blends Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), and mindfulness. That means looking at the relationship between your thoughts, emotions, physical experiences, and patterns, while helping you build a healthier relationship with feelings you may have spent years analyzing, minimizing, or trying to logic your way out of.
Crissa brings particular interest to life transitions, communication, relationship dynamics, burnout, authenticity, and the pressure high-achieving people can feel to constantly perform or meet other people’s expectations.
The goal isn’t to create a more polished version of you. It’s to help you understand what feels true, build greater confidence in your own needs and values, and create a life and relationships that feel more like home.
"I've done everything I was supposed to do, and somehow I still feel like something is missing. I'm tired of living by everyone else's expectations and trying to think my way out of feelings I don't know what to do with."
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A Little About Crissa
Crissa began working in mental health at 18, supporting children with a range of neurodivergent needs at an equine rescue. During college, she volunteered on a suicide and crisis line and later helped train new volunteers.
She originally entered college as a music education major before realizing counseling was the work she wanted to pursue. Crissa went on to earn her master’s degree from North Carolina Central University and her PhD from East Carolina University.
Her career has also included training and teaching other counselors. She continues to pursue education in areas including relationship dynamics, communication, burnout prevention, and helping people process emotions rather than relying only on logic to manage them.
Crissa brings both clinical experience and her own understanding of identity, transition, and self-discovery into therapy. Her goal is to help clients become more comfortable, confident, and genuinely themselves wherever life takes them.
My Expertise
Education
- Master of Arts in Mental Health Counseling, 2020: North Carolina Central University
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Counselor Preparation and Research, Rehabilitation and Clinical Counseling concentration, 2023: East Carolina University
Professional Credentials & Training
- Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor (LCMHC), License #18626: North Carolina Board of Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselors
- National Certified Counselor (NCC): National Board for Certified Counselors
Articles by Crissa
Perfumed Palms and Green Resolve: The Faces of People Pleasing
Glinda and Elphaba show two very different faces of people-pleasing. Learn to spot the pattern in your own life and start choosing yourself.
