Cristina Spataro, LMHC

Cristina Spataro is a New York State licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) with 18 years of experience. She focuses on helping people who are feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, depression, relationship and family struggles, or big life changes. Her approach is practical and down-to-earth, aimed at making daily life easier to manage.

She uses cognitive behavioral techniques to help people notice unhelpful thinking and try different ways of responding. She also practices client-centered therapy, offering a supportive space where a person's own goals guide each session. Sessions focus on clear steps and small experiments that build skills over time.

Cristina has worked with people facing grief, trauma and abuse, addiction concerns, intimacy issues, and caregiver strain. She also supports people dealing with career questions, self-esteem, parenting stress, and challenges related to adoption or abandonment experiences. Her background includes many years responding to crisis situations as well as longer-term counseling work.

In sessions she aims to be straightforward and compassionate. Conversations often include practical coping tools, communication strategies, and ways to manage emotions so daily life feels more predictable. She helps clients set realistic goals and track progress between meetings.

Cristina offers sessions in English from New York and provides several online formats. She encourages people to reach out when they notice patterns that cause suffering, so problems can be addressed before they grow worse.

Approaches to change and online care

CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, focuses on how thoughts, feelings, and actions connect. It uses practical exercises and short experiments to reduce distress and change unhelpful patterns, which can help with anxiety, depression, and coping challenges. Client-centered therapy prioritizes the person's own goals and pace, offering empathic listening and respect so the person can discover solutions that fit their life.

Choosing the right approach is part of the work together. Cristina will collaborate with each person to decide which methods to try first and will adjust plans based on how things are going. That shared process helps match techniques to real goals rather than applying a one-size-fits-all plan.

Online sessions include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging. Video is useful for in-depth sessions and visual cues, phone calls work when bandwidth is limited or for a focused check-in, and chat or messaging can fit brief updates or work that happens between meetings. These options make it easier to schedule therapy around work, family, and day-to-day life while keeping consistent momentum toward goals.