Jennifer Ricci

Jennifer Ricci is a New York-based licensed mental health counselor and a certified clinical trauma professional with 18 years of experience providing both mental health and addictions therapy. She holds a master’s degree focused on community mental health counseling, addictions counseling, and marriage and family therapy (2009) and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and family studies (2006). She works with individuals, couples, families, and groups.

Her practice experience spans shelters, community mental health centers, schools, and private practices. People seek her support for concerns including depression, anxiety, trauma - such as childhood abuse, domestic violence, religious trauma, and first responder or military-related trauma - as well as substance use, self-esteem, family and social relationship difficulties, grief, and coping with life changes. Her areas of specialty also include relationship issues, intimacy-related problems, eating disorders, stress, addictions, LGBT matters, family conflict, and compassion fatigue.

Therapeutically she centers her work in family systems theory - the idea that individuals are shaped by the networks and systems around them - and integrates concepts from other approaches to meet each person’s needs. That integration can include shifting unhelpful beliefs toward healthier patterns, brief solution-focused strategies when appropriate, mindfulness practices, hands-on activities, and emotion regulation skills. She is EMDRIA-trained in EMDR adapted for telehealth and offers EMDR treatment to clients who are appropriate and motivated.

Jennifer describes counseling as a collaborative, instructional journey: the client is the expert on their own life while she provides guidance, structure, and support. She aims to help people set and reach goals while actively participating in the therapeutic process. Beginning therapy can bring up worry or fear, and she addresses those feelings from the outset, cultivating a warm, respectful, trauma-informed environment tailored to individual needs. She welcomes the opportunity to meet and support those who choose to begin this work.