Stephanie Fuertes

Stephanie Fuertes is a licensed mental health counselor in New York who helps people navigate stressful life changes and relationship strain. She supports adults coping with anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, addiction concerns, parenting stress, and separation or divorce. Her manner is direct, compassionate, and nonjudgmental, aiming to make hard conversations feel manageable.

She uses a client-centered approach that treats the person in front of her as the expert on their life. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is part of her work, helping people spot thinking patterns that keep problems stuck and try practical alternatives. She also brings a trauma-informed perspective to understand how past experiences shape present reactions.

Sessions are conversational and focused on small, doable steps. Stephanie helps people set clear goals and follows their pace while suggesting tools like thought records, grounding practices, and short behavioral experiments. She also uses solution-focused techniques to identify strengths and what already works.

Stephanie has six years of clinical experience as an LMHC - Licensed Mental Health Counselor. She has worked with adults facing illness-related stress, attachment and abandonment concerns, body image and codependency issues, and communication problems among other areas. Her bilingual skills in English and Spanish allow her to support a wider range of people.

People who choose her often want practical ways to reduce distress and rebuild routines after a major life change. To begin, clients complete a short matching questionnaire and then schedule sessions according to availability.

How therapeutic approaches translate to online work

Client-Centered Therapy focuses on treating the client as the expert of their life and follows their lead to build goals that feel meaningful. Online sessions using this approach tend to center on listening, reflection, and helping the person identify their priorities and next steps.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at the link between thoughts, feelings, and actions. In remote sessions this often means reviewing specific situations, noticing unhelpful thought patterns, and practicing small behavioral experiments between meetings to test new ways of responding.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The therapist will collaborate with each person to decide which methods fit their goals, needs, and preferences. That choice can change over time as different tools are tried and adjusted together.

Confirm the current online session options before booking, as formats are not listed here. One practical benefit of remote therapy is fitting sessions into busy days without long travel. It can also make shorter check-ins easier to schedule, allow for sessions when mobility is limited, and reduce time away from work or caregiving tasks. Licensed professionals can adapt exercises like thought records, grounding skills, and solution-focused planning to an online setting so work continues between meetings.