
Jacki Applebaum

The most profound intimacy doesn’t require feeling the same things at the same time. It’s built when we honor how differently we each experience the world, then find our way back to each other.
Jacki has a background supporting families through complex medical journeys and life-altering transitions. She knows how illness and loss ripple through a relationship, touching each partner differently and she supports couples and families in honoring these individual experiences while finding their way back to connection. Jacki specializes in helping couples and individuals navigate life’s profound shifts alongside its everyday recalibrations. Whether you’re adjusting to parenthood, deepening intimacy, working through old wounds, or managing how chronic illness has reshaped your partnership, Jacki helps clients move from feeling overwhelmed or numb to having real agency over their emotional experience.
Jacki understands that some people experience life more intensely than others, feeling both joy and pain at amplified volumes. With Jacki, you’ll learn to work with that intensity rather than against it: embracing the depth of feeling while also gaining the ability to turn the volume up or down as needed. Jacki integrates existential and relational approaches with practical tools, creating therapy that’s as unique as you are. She’s passionate about helping people live as their most authentic selves, exploring how our relationship with ourselves fundamentally shapes our relationships with others.
Working with Jacki means being met with warmth and genuine care. She creates a space where all expressions of identity, desire, and relationship structures are welcomed without judgment. Within this safe and caring environment, she’ll gently guide you to explore the parts of yourself that lie beneath the surface. She is deeply attuned to nuance and ordinary moments that can be easily missed: the small shifts in language, the unspoken dynamics, the systemic patterns that shape how we show up in relationships. Jacki brings a focused curiosity to her work, helping clients try on different perspectives to make meaning of their experiences and discover new ways forward. Clients often describe sessions with her as both challenging and affirming: a place where they feel truly seen and understood, while being encouraged to step into new possibilities.
- I live by the philosophy that
- our capacity for growth is infinite when we’re willing to meet ourselves with curiosity and compassion.
- I could spend every day
- basking in the sun with my old dog and a good book.
- As a therapist, I
- create a space where you can uncover and connect with the parts of yourself that have been hiding, waiting to be understood and integrated.
Credentials
- M.A. Clinical Psychology, Widener University
- B.S. Psychology, Drexel University
- Internship, Thomas Jefferson University’s Headache Center
- Practicum, Thomas Jefferson University’s Center City Clinic for Behavioral Medicine
- Practicum, Penn Medicine’s Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic
Affiliations
- American Psychological Association (APA)
- APA Division 45: Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race
- APA Division 56: Trauma Psychology
Relevant Training
- Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
- Gottman Method Couples Therapy: Level 2
- Trained as an Ashtanga and Vinyasa yoga teacher, Yoga Alliance 200 hrs
Specialties
- ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder)
- Alcohol/other substance use concerns
- Body Image Concerns
- Communication
- Family Therapy
- Identity Exploration
- Existential Concerns
- LGBTQIA+
- Parenting and Co-Parenting Support
- Gender-affirming Care
- Psychosis
- Serious or Chronic Illness
- Trauma/PTSD
- Grief and Heartbreak support
- Affair/Infidelity Recovery
- Infertility/miscarriage support
Modalities
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Behavioral Activation (BA)
- Cognitive Behavioral Couples Therapy (CBCT)
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I)
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Pain (CBT-CP)
- Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Existential Psychotherapy
- Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
- Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
- Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE)
- Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
- Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT)
