You don’t have to keep going in circles.

You can know a lot about yourself and still feel stuck.

You may have thought hard about your life. You might know your patterns, understand your history, or have a strong sense of what needs to change. Still, something keeps getting in the way.

Perhaps you feel alienated from your family, dissatisfied at work, or unsure where you belong. You may feel defeated and angry about it—or find yourself wondering whether there is something fundamentally wrong with you.

In therapy, there is room to look beyond that conclusion. We can explore what you’ve been up against, how you’ve learned to respond, and what you want to become possible now.

Understanding yourself is a beginning—not the whole goal.

I’m interested in how you became who you are: the relationships, expectations, circumstances, and experiences that have shaped your life. That includes the ways you’ve learned to protect yourself, get through difficult situations, or resist things that didn’t feel right.

Some of those responses may still help you. Others may now leave you feeling isolated, constrained, or caught in patterns you want to change. We can take them seriously without judging you for having needed them.

Our work is not just about finding an explanation. It’s about making use of what you learn—so that understanding can become a different conversation, a new choice, or another way of relating to yourself and other people.

Approaches I draw on

My work is informed by psychodynamic and psychoanalytic thinking. I also offer dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and cognitive processing therapy (CPT), with formal training in each. We can discuss which approaches fit your needs and goals.

You don’t have to know the right words.

You can bring strong feelings, uncertainty, anger, or difficulty knowing what you feel at all. You don’t need to explain yourself in clinical language or arrive with a polished account of what’s wrong.

I want to understand how you describe your experience, not ask you to fit it into my vocabulary. We’ll develop a way of working and talking together that makes sense to you.

Therapy can also be a place to practice: saying something you usually hold back, noticing what you need, disagreeing, or letting yourself be seen. We can pay attention to what happens between us and how it connects to your life beyond the room.

What might bring you here

• Relationships that feel painful, distant, or caught in familiar patterns.
• Dissatisfaction with work or uncertainty about your direction.
• Feeling like an outsider in your family, community, or the wider world.
• Depression, loneliness, anger, or a sense of defeat.
• Diagnoses or past treatment experiences you’re trying to make sense of.
• Concerns about alcohol, substances, or other ways of coping.
• Questions about identity, belonging, and what makes life meaningful.

I welcome teachers, social workers, civil servants, and others whose work involves caring for people or serving their communities. There is room here to focus on your own life, too.

About Jakob

Before becoming a therapist, I spent much of my twenties trying to build a life in New York around work, writing, art, and comedy. Over time, I realized that the work occupying most of my days needed to reflect what mattered to me. Volunteering—first helping people use computers to find work, and later at Fountain House—helped bring me back to an earlier interest in social work.

My community mental health experience includes work on Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams, in shelters, and in crisis settings, including work with people experiencing serious mental illness. Those settings deepened my interest in how people keep going under difficult circumstances—and how relationships, institutions, and material conditions shape what feels possible.

That perspective remains central to my work. I don’t see people as separate from the worlds they live in, or believe that every difficulty can be understood as an individual problem.

My approach is informed by psychodynamic and psychoanalytic thinking, alongside other therapeutic methods when useful. I’m interested in helping you understand yourself in ways that make a difference to how you live.

How to get started

1. Get in touch

   Use the scheduling link below to take the first step.

2. Talk about what brings you here

   We’ll discuss what you’re looking for, the practical details, and whether working together feels like a good fit.

3. Begin the work

   We’ll develop a shared understanding of what you want help with and revisit it as therapy unfolds.

A life led more by hope and possibility

We can’t know exactly what the future will bring. But we can work toward a life less organized around what you dread or expect to go wrong—and more open to what you want, value, and might become.

That can begin with understanding where you are now, and having someone alongside you as you explore what comes next.

Get in touch

I offer in-person therapy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, as well as virtual sessions. Evening and weekend appointments are available.

You don’t need to have everything figured out before starting. Use the scheduling link to find a time.