Elisa Mantel-Smith

Elisa Mantel-Smith is a licensed clinical social worker with a decade of experience supporting people through hard life moments. She holds a Master of Social Work from Columbia University and practices in New York. Elisa offers a calm, straightforward style and aims to meet people where they are. Elisa draws on several practical approaches to help people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and grief. She uses client-centered methods to follow each person's lead, and cognitive behavioral techniques to spot unhelpful thinking and try new behavior. She also brings trauma-focused and solution-focused ways of working when those approaches fit the situation. Her work includes concerns around relationships, parenting, family problems, and intimacy issues. She also helps people facing caregiving strain, compassion fatigue, adoption and foster care questions, and fertility or cancer-related stress. Intellectual disability is listed among her additional focus areas and she includes related communication and daily-living concerns in her work. Elisa has supported people dealing with addictions, eating and body-image issues, obsessive-compulsive patterns, panic, phobias, and ADHD. She combines listening with concrete steps clients can try between sessions. The tone in her sessions is direct but warm. To begin, she asks people to share what they need and to set clear goals together. Her approach favors practical strategies alongside emotional support to help people handle life changes and build skills that fit their day-to-day life.

How Elisa’s Approaches Work Online

Client-centered therapy follows the person's lead and focuses on listening and understanding what matters most to them. This approach helps when someone needs a supportive space to talk through feelings and decisions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at patterns of thought and behavior and offers small experiments to change them. It is often used for anxiety, depression, panic, and obsessive thinking because it gives clear steps people can try between sessions. Emotionally-Focused Therapy helps people notice and name feelings and how those feelings shape relationships. It can be useful for intimacy issues, communication problems, and family tensions. Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. The therapist will talk with the person about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn't helped before. Together they decide which methods make the most sense and adjust as work progresses. Confirm the current online session options before booking, as specific formats are not listed here. Online work can make it easier to fit therapy into busy days, allow shorter check-in times when needed, and reduce travel time. Some formats also use less bandwidth or don’t require being on camera, which can help people focus on the conversation rather than tech details.