Mary Alfinito

Mary Alfinito is a New York LCSW-R with 40 years of clinical experience. She helps people facing stress, anxiety, grief, depression, ADHD, trauma and abuse, and questions about career and life purpose. She also supports LGBT concerns and people coping with major life changes. Her work is straightforward and conversational. Sessions focus on practical steps and clear skills people can use between meetings. She draws on approaches that address thoughts, emotions, and behavior to reduce distress and improve daily functioning. Mary uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to identify unhelpful thinking patterns and try different responses. She also uses Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills to teach emotion regulation and coping strategies. Trauma-Focused Therapy guides work when past events are keeping someone stuck. In a typical session she listens to what feels most urgent, helps break problems into manageable parts, and practices small changes together. She pays attention to attachment and abandonment issues, communication problems, and struggles with self-esteem and body image when these come up. Her background includes long experience with developmental and learning differences, chronic illness and disability, and caregiver stress. She has worked with clients dealing with codependency, divorce and separation, gender dysphoria, and first responder issues. Mary aims to be clear about options, offer concrete tools, and help people test what works for them.

How her therapeutic approaches work online

Mary often uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people notice and change thoughts and behaviors that fuel anxiety or low mood. CBT is practical and goal-directed, useful for stress, depression, and career-related doubts.

She also brings Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills into work on strong emotions and impulsive reactions. DBT skills focus on emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and clearer communication when relationships are strained. When past events are a central problem, Trauma-Focused Therapy is used to process those memories and reduce their ongoing impact.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. She will discuss options and try methods that fit each person’s needs, goals, and preferences. That decision is collaborative and can shift as therapy progresses.

Confirm the specific session formats before booking, as the biography does not list them. Online sessions can make it easier to fit meetings into a busy week, shorten a check-in when time is tight, or avoid travel. Licensed professionals often use video or phone in different ways to match what a person needs for a given appointment.