Toni Spera, LCSW

Toni Spera is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) licensed in New York with five years of professional experience. She works with people facing addictions, relationship strain, trauma and abuse, and related concerns such as anxiety, depression, grief, and stress. Toni names codependency among her focus areas and often supports people who struggle with people-pleasing or losing themselves in relationships.

Her way of working centers on respecting each person’s own knowledge of their life. She uses a client-centered stance, which means listening first and shaping sessions around what matters to the individual. Toni also draws on practical tools from cognitive behavioral therapy to notice and change unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns.

Mindfulness techniques are part of her approach for managing anxiety, overwhelm, and strong emotions. When motivation is low or change feels stalled, she uses motivational interviewing to clarify goals and find manageable next steps. Dialectical behavior therapy skills appear in work on emotion regulation and distress tolerance.

In sessions she tends to be straightforward and practical. People can expect conversations that look at current patterns, try small experiments between meetings, and build skills for setting boundaries and handling triggers. She frames progress as steady practice rather than instant fixes.

Toni’s background and methods suit people wrestling with addiction, relationship patterns, codependency, and trauma-related symptoms. She pairs listening with exercises you can use day to day. If someone wants to begin, they are asked to complete a short matching questionnaire and schedule a first session to get started.

How Toni’s approaches translate to online work