If you run a company or sit on its leadership team, the job is loud in a way that doesn't have anywhere good to go. Direct reports can't be your sounding board. Your board has its own agenda. Your partner gets the version of you that's left at the end of the day. Your old friends from school think you're doing great. Therapy is one of the few rooms where you can speak honestly without it becoming a political event.
We work with executives every day at Modern Therapy Group across NYC and our six other states. Many of our clients are CEOs, COOs, partners, MDs at PE firms, senior creative directors, GMs of multi-hundred-person teams. The work is rarely about "executive coaching" and rarely about discrete crises. It's usually about the slower problems: living with constant pressure, separating self-worth from performance, staying in relationships that get neglected by the schedule, and figuring out who you are when you're not running the room.
What executive clients actually come in for
The specifics vary, but the patterns recur. Some of the most common:
- Chronic low-grade anxiety that you've learned to function around. Wakes you up at 4am. Doesn't go away when the deal closes.
- Imposter syndrome that doesn't match your resume. The sense that you're one bad quarter from being found out.
- Resentment building in a marriage or partnership that's been quietly running on autopilot for years.
- Numbness. The thing that used to feel exciting feels routine, and you can't tell if that's growth or hollowing out.
- Drinking, scrolling, working out, or working more as the only reliable downshifts.
- Conflict with a co-founder, board member, or peer that you keep playing back in your head.
- Decision fatigue. You make 80 decisions a day and have nothing left for the small ones.
- A creeping sense that the version of yourself you're performing isn't the one you'd choose if you could start over.
- Major transitions: founding a company, selling a company, getting promoted into a role that requires a different version of you, getting let go.
- Loss. Of parents, of partners, of a career identity you'd built your life around.
None of these are weakness. They're predictable consequences of running things at this level for a sustained period of time. The work is figuring out what to do with them.
What you can expect from the room
Our clinicians don't perform deference and they don't get starstruck. If you ran a public company yesterday, the person across from you today has worked with people in similar roles before and knows the patterns. Therapy is most useful when the therapist can challenge you, not just validate you. We hire for that.
That said, none of our therapists are coaches. They won't write your strategic plan. They won't tell you whether to take the offer. The work is on the underlying patterns that make those choices harder than they need to be, the relationships that bear the cost of your job, the version of you that's been on autopilot for too long.
How we treat what executives bring in
The right approach depends on what you're working on. Our clinicians are integrative, pulling from several evidence-based frameworks.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most studied protocol for anxiety, sleep disruption, and the rumination loops that wake you at 4am. It's structured, present-focused, and gives you concrete tools. Most clients notice a meaningful shift within 8 to 12 sessions.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) treats the inner experience as a system of parts (a perfectionist part, a critic part, an exhausted part) and helps you build different relationships with them. Useful for clients with strong inner critics, for chronic over-functioning, and for the version of perfectionism that looks productive from outside but feels like a treadmill inside.
Psychodynamic and relational therapy focuses on long-standing patterns in how you relate to authority, partners, peers, and yourself. Slower, deeper work. Often the right fit when the same conflict keeps showing up across companies, marriages, or decades.
Somatic and body-based approaches address what shows up in your nervous system, not just your mind. Most executives carry chronic activation patterns the body has gotten used to. Somatic work helps the body come down from sustained alert states. Useful when the problem feels physical (sleep, tension, panic, exhaustion) as much as mental.
Most clients work weekly for the first 2 to 4 months, then move to biweekly as patterns stabilize. Some wrap up after 6 months with what they came for. Others stay longer for deeper work. There's no single right cadence.
What makes Modern Therapy Group different
Real licensed clinicians, not coaches. Every one of our 43 therapists holds a state license (LMHC, LCSW, PsyD, or MD for our psychiatrists) and has completed at least 3,000 hours of supervised clinical practice. Coaching is its own discipline; this is therapy.
Discretion as default. We don't ask for referral details we don't need, we don't share client lists, and our clinicians are trained to assume any one of their clients could be running an organization that intersects with another client's.
In-network with major insurance. Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Empire BCBS, Horizon BCBS, Optum, UnitedHealthcare, Oxford, and 18 other carriers. Most clients pay $0 to $40 per session once their deductible is met. For self-pay, $125 per session.
No waitlists. Most clients are matched and have a first session within 5 to 7 days of reaching out.
Schedule flexibility. Pre-market, lunch, evening, and weekend slots available with multiple clinicians. Virtual sessions for travel and density weeks.
Therapy and psychiatry coordinated under one roof. If sleep, anxiety, or mood benefit from medication evaluation, our psychiatrists work in-house. You don't have to find and brief a second provider.
What to expect in your first session
Your first session is a conversation. Your therapist asks what brought you in, what you've already tried, what you want to be different, and how you tend to relate to support. They won't ask you to relive your worst week in the first hour.
By the end of session one you should have a rough plan for the next few sessions, a sense of how this clinician works, and space to ask questions. If the fit isn't right, we switch you to a different therapist on the team. That happens occasionally and it isn't awkward.
Insurance and getting started
If you have insurance, verify your coverage. We come back within one business day with your actual per-session cost.
If you're paying out of pocket, our self-pay rate is $125 per session. Several therapists accept HSA and FSA cards.
Executive therapy in NYC
Our Manhattan office serves clients across the five boroughs. We work with executives at companies large and small, partners at firms across finance, law, consulting, and media, founders going through the harder stretches of building, and senior leaders making the kind of decisions that have human consequences.
If your week doesn't allow in-person, virtual sessions are equally effective and easier to schedule. You can also see your therapist from outside NYC if you live or work in NY, NJ, FL, VT, CT, TX, or CA.
When you're ready, the next step is the 60-second matching quiz or verifying your insurance. Both get you to a first session within a week.