Executive Therapist
The higher you go, the fewer people you can be honest with. The board gets the confident version, the team gets the steady version, and your family gets whatever is left at the end of the day. I'm Dr. Jené Verchick, a licensed psychologist with 26+ years working with executives, founders, and senior leaders, the people everyone else leans on.
What Is an Executive Therapist?
An executive therapist is a licensed mental health clinician who works specifically with people in senior leadership roles. The job pressures are distinct: responsibility for other people's livelihoods, decisions with no clean answers, visibility that makes ordinary struggle feel impermissible, and an identity that gets welded to a title. Executive therapy treats the person inside the role, with the clinical depth that coaching is not designed to provide.
Therapy or Executive Coaching?
Both have real value, and they do different jobs. Coaching optimizes performance: goals, presence, decision frameworks. Therapy works on what's underneath: the anxiety that doesn't shut off, the anger that leaks at home, the impostor feeling that no achievement fixes, the family history that taught you rest must be earned. If you've done coaching and the same internal patterns keep surfacing, that's usually the sign you need the deeper tool.
Who I Work With
CEOs and C-suite leaders, founders, fund managers, and senior professionals across demanding industries. A large share of my practice is women in executive roles, where the pressures stack differently and the room to show strain is even smaller. And because I've spent 26+ years doing couples work, when the role starts costing the marriage, we can work on that directly instead of referring it out.
For Women Leaders
Women in executive roles carry a second, unspoken job: calibrating. Direct but not abrasive, confident but not cold, ambitious but still endlessly available to everyone at home. The margin for visible strain is thinner, and the room of peers who truly get it is smaller. A large share of my practice is women leaders working through exactly this: the authority-likability bind, the scrutiny, the guilt that shadows every tradeoff, and the question of what you actually want underneath what everyone expects. We spend time on balancing motherhood, being a wife, and your career demands.
What We Work On
The isolation of being the person with the answers. Decision fatigue that follows you home. A temper or a flatness your family notices before you do. Sleep that won't come because the mind won't close. The quiet question of who you'd be without the role. None of this means something is wrong with you. It means you've been carrying real weight without a place to set it down.
How I Work
Active and direct. You will not get fifty minutes of nodding; that doesn't work on people who run rooms for a living. I'll tell you what I see, we'll get under it, and you'll leave with something usable. Sessions are by video and built around an executive calendar, early, late, or between things.
What to Expect
First session: you talk, I ask precise questions, and I give you my honest read of what's situational, what's older than the job, and what the work looks like. We meet weekly. Leaders tend to move fast in therapy once they have the one room where nothing has to be managed.
What Clients Say
“Being a woman CEO meant I was constantly calibrating how much confidence, warmth, firmness, and vulnerability I was allowed to show. I came to Dr. Verchick exhausted from managing everyone’s perception of me. She helped me stop performing steadiness and start actually feeling steadier.”
— CEO, healthcare company
“I had done the coaching, the leadership programs, and the peer groups. They helped, but they didn’t touch the part of me that still felt one mistake away from being exposed. Dr. Verchick helped me understand the anxiety underneath the achievement, and how much of my leadership style had been built around never needing anything.”
— Founder & CEO, technology company
“Dr. Verchick understood the part of leadership that is hardest to explain: you can be performing well and still feel like you have nowhere to put the pressure. She helped me get honest about the anxiety I was managing, the anger that was coming home with me, and the way my identity had become fused with the company.”
— CEO, private company
“I came to Dr. Verchick because my marriage was absorbing the cost of my work. At the office I was composed and decisive; at home I was distant, irritable, and depleted. She helped me see the pattern without shaming me for it, and then helped us work on it directly.”
— Managing Partner, investment firm
Common Questions
Is this confidential from my company?
Completely. You hire me, not your employer. This is private therapy, not a workplace program, and nothing is shared with anyone.
I've had executive coaching. How would this be different?
Coaching gave you tools for the role. Therapy works on the person holding them. Most of my executive clients have done coaching and found this reaches the things coaching couldn't.
Can my spouse or partner join sessions?
Yes. The role's costs often land hardest at home, and couples work is the core of my practice. Many executive clients move between individual and couples sessions as the work requires.
How does scheduling work with my calendar?
By video, with early and late slots, planned around your reality. One consistent hour a week is the requirement, and we make it fit.