Therapy for Entrepreneurs in New York City
Depth-oriented therapy for founders carrying the weight of something they’re building from nothing.
I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) offering private, in-person individual therapy on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and online across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. My work is psychoanalytically informed — a place to slow down and understand yourself beneath the pace of building.
Entrepreneur therapy — scope at a glance
Pressure to succeed · role overload · anxiety · the self beneath the work
Psychoanalytic · present-focused · relational
The pressure of building something rarely stays at the office.
When the thing you’re building is your own, the line between the work and the self gets thin. Its wins feel like your worth; its risks feel like your safety. Much of my New York practice is founders and entrepreneurs who recognize themselves in something like this:
- Starting something new, and feeling the full weight of whether it survives
- Wearing every hat at once, and never feeling fully competent at any of them
- An anxiety that runs underneath the excitement and is hard to switch off
- The freedom to set your own schedule that somehow means you’re never off
What the pressure does when no one's watching.
Some of what I see, again and again, in the founders I work with:
The weight of the new
Starting from nothing, with no proof yet that it will work.
Pressure to succeed
Your sense of worth quietly fused to whether the thing does.
Wearing every hat
Switching between roles all day, feeling expert in none of them.
The always-on mind
Being your own boss means the work never fully closes.
Freedom without edges
Setting your own schedule, and struggling to find its limits.
Alone at the top
Carrying decisions you can’t fully share with your team or investors.
A place to put it down and look at it.
My work is psychoanalytically informed and depth-oriented. Building something demands constant forward motion — deciding, switching, performing — and leaves very little room to feel what all of it is costing you. Therapy is that room: somewhere to slow down beneath the pace, notice the anxiety and pressure you’ve learned to push through, and understand what’s actually driving them. So much of the weight founders carry isn’t only about the business — it’s about what the business has come to mean, and what it would say about you to struggle. Being closely witnessed there, rather than managing it alone, is often what lets the pressure loosen its grip.
Depth isn’t the whole of it, though. Alongside that understanding, when it’s useful, we bring in practical, evidence-based tools — skills from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and the values-based focus of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — to shape a schedule that reflects what actually matters to you, rather than one that swallows you whole. The goal is a working life you feel genuinely in control of, not just one you manage to survive.
Clear about who this is — and isn't — for.
A good fit for
- Founders and entrepreneurs (18+) seeking depth-oriented individual therapy
- People whose sense of self has become entangled with the thing they’re building
- Those who want to understand the anxiety and pressure, not only manage it
- Anyone willing to slow down and stay curious about what’s underneath the drive
Not the right fit for
- Children or adolescents (I work with adults only)
- Anyone in crisis or needing urgent/emergency care
- Situations needing recent-hospitalization or higher-level care
- Court-mandated treatment or custody evaluations
- People looking primarily for business coaching or strategy rather than therapy
What patients are saying on Zocdoc
See all reviews on Zocdoc →
Nicole Trister, LCSW
Therapy for Entrepreneurs in New York City — FAQ
Do I need to talk about my business, or is this about me?
Both — and the line between them is usually the point. When you’re building something of your own, the pressure to succeed, the anxiety, and your sense of who you are tend to get tangled together. We follow wherever that leads. Often the business is the doorway into something more personal underneath.
I can barely find time as it is — how does this fit a founder's schedule?
Being your own boss is double-edged: you can set your own schedule and switch your attention where it’s needed, but the work rarely closes, and “off” can stop existing. Part of what we do is look honestly at that — why the freedom to structure your own time so often becomes never being off. I hold a consistent, protected hour that stays yours regardless of what the week throws at you, and that flexibility is one thing that can make depth-oriented work sustainable for founders.
Is this coaching or therapy?
Therapy. Coaching tends to work on the business and its goals; this works on you — the anxiety, the pressure, and the patterns underneath the drive. The two can complement each other, but what happens here is depth-oriented clinical work, not strategy.
How do you help with decisions when emotion is clouding the call?
Founders make high-stakes decisions constantly, often while anxious, exhausted, or under pressure — states that quietly distort judgment. Part of the work is building the capacity to notice when a decision is being driven by fear or urgency rather than clarity. I draw on a DBT skill called Wise Mind — the place where reason and emotion meet, rather than one overriding the other — so you can use both your analysis and your gut without being hijacked by either. For genuinely hard calls, we also use a structured pros-and-cons approach that weighs not just the upside of each option but the costs of acting and of not acting. The point isn’t to take emotion out of your decisions — it’s real information — but to keep it from making the choice for you.
What if I don't have the time?
It’s the best thing you could give the time to. The internal work you do here doesn’t stay in this room — it changes how you lead, how you decide, and how present you can be in the relationships that matter, both now and years from now. Your business, your sense of self, and the people closest to you all benefit when you understand yourself more clearly. Making time for this isn’t taking away from what you’re building — it’s an investment in the person doing the building.
If you've been building this alone, you don't have to. Let's talk.
Consultations are held privately and by inquiry.