Tonya Wacker
Trusted counselor for families and parents
- Credentials
- LPC, LPCC
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed in
- Kentucky, Tennessee
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Tonya
Tonya Wacker is a licensed counselor who brings 14 years of experience to family and parenting concerns. She is licensed as an LPC and as an LPCC and practices from Tennessee. Tonya focuses on helping people who feel overwhelmed by anxiety, depression, relationship strain, parenting challenges, grief, trauma, and life changes.
She uses practical strategies and straightforward conversation to help families and individuals find clearer footing. Tonya leans on counseling styles that keep the client at the center.
Background and approach
She blends cognitive behavioral techniques to shift unhelpful thoughts with mindfulness skills to ease stress in daily life. She also draws on dialectical behavior therapy tools to manage intense emotions and improve coping during conflict or crisis. Her work aims to make therapy understandable and useful.
Sessions tend to focus on identifying problems, building small skills, and creating simple plans that fit a family’s routine. She often helps people untangle issues that come from family history, parenting pressure, or identity concerns so they can move forward more calmly. Tonya values collaboration and straightforward goals.
She explains options and helps each person or family choose what feels practical and workable. Parents can expect concrete suggestions for managing behavior, stress, and communication. She offers multiple online formats including video calls, phone, live chat, and text-based messaging.
Sessions are scheduled through a matching and booking process that lets clients find time that fits their lives.
How her approaches translate to online therapy
Client-Centered Therapy focuses on listening and responding to what matters most to the client. Online sessions use that same gentle, respectful stance to let parents and family members talk through priorities and find workable goals. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, helps identify unhelpful thinking and replace it with clearer, more useful thoughts; in teletherapy this often becomes short exercises and home practice between sessions to change daily routines and reactions.Finding the right approach is part of the work. Tonya will collaborate with each person or family to decide which methods to try first based on needs and preferences. Together they set goals, check progress, and adjust the plan if something is not working well.
Online formats include video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, offering flexibility for busy families. These options make it easier to fit sessions into school, work, and caregiving schedules and to continue work between meetings through short messages or written exercises. Licensed professionals can still use structured tools and skill practice effectively in these formats, which helps families build steady habits over time.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Concrete skills for riding out strong emotion, tolerating distress, and handling relationships without things escalating. The skills are practised in daily life, so between-session support by message or phone fits naturally.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- LGBT
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- BDSM, kink, and alternative sex culture
- Bipolar disorder
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Depression
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- HIV / AIDS
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Multicultural concerns
- Parenting issues
- Polyamory / non-monogamous relationships
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 14 years
- Licensed
- Kentucky, Tennessee
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Tonya
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- Stop at any point