Press

About Tonya Lester, LCSW 

Psychotherapist and author

Tonya Lester is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, private psychotherapist, Psychology Today contributor and author. For over 16 years, Tonya has taught couples and individuals how to manage their minds and emotions, develop relationships that are mutually respectful and supportive and approach decision-making and communication with clarity and courage. She believes in starting where you are, experimenting with new ways of being and focusing all of your attention on what you can do now, as opposed to fixating on what is currently out of reach.

In her upcoming book, Be Difficult: A Guide to Speaking Up, Facing Conflict, and Changing Your Life, Tonya draws on years of experience working with   couples and noticing how often women who seem empowered in other areas of their lives are overly deferential and accommodating in their relationships. In her writing, Tonya often encourages “putting pressure on the system” – meaning that all systems, including relationships, can tolerate the pressure needed to evolve and grow, and if they can’t survive this healthy pressure, the relationship wasn’t viable over the long-term in the first place. With Be Difficult, Tonya hopes the reader will walk away empowered to apply this healthy pressure to their own lives

Tonya’s years of experience have taught her that the formula for creating successful, mutually beneficial relationships is this: deep self-knowledge and authenticity, direct and honest communication, a heavy dose of compassion and finally, meaningful, values based action. After many years of training and exploration, Tonya fell in love with IFS (Internal Family Systems), ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), and, for couples' work, RLT (Relational Life Therapy).  All three modalities complement each other, and her clients have benefitted deeply from this combined approach.

Tonya graduated from New York University with a master's degree in social work. Her post-graduate training includes a year-long fellowship at Psychoanalytic Theory at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Theory and Research (IPTAR) and three years of supervised practice in Psychodynamic Therapy under Drs. C.E. Robins and John Broughton. She completed her training in IFS with Dick Schwartz, Nancy Sowell and Pam Krause. Additionally, her training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) was with John Forsyth, Ph.D. and she studied RLT with its creator, Terry Real. Tonya currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.