About me

Jesse Zelisko (she/her/hers) is a Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary-trained psychotherapist with a background in Buddhist spiritual care. A member of Columbia’s inaugural psychedelic-assisted therapy cohort (MSW) and a graduate of Union Theological Seminary’s Thích Nhất Hạnh Program for Engaged Buddhism (MDiv), she specializes in the intersection between healing, spirituality, and altered states of consciousness.

Jesse holds space for the hard stuff, including the quiet limits that even the most accomplished people run up against. She shows up for the raw, real, unfiltered parts of people’s lives, and helps them move through limits and pain toward insight and expanded capacity, one honest conversation at a time. A daughter of two psychotherapists, she was raised in a home that prioritized the richness of one’s inner life, which shaped the foundation of her psychotherapeutic practice. 

For Jesse, suffering is not an obstacle to wholeness, but instead the pathway to freedom. She supports young adults, professionals in high-performance fields, and creatives as they find their center amid rapid change. From the new executive who lands her ideal role to the partner whose wife suddenly passes away, Jesse guides people through crisis, loss, and major transitions, as well as those needing to rediscover life’s juice. With the ultimate goals of intimacy and repair, she helps couples reformulate how past traumatic experiences show up in their relationship.

Jesse’s clinical foundation includes psychoanalytic training at Rose Hill Psychological Center and work as an integration specialist and psychedelic psychotherapist at Nushama, New York’s largest ketamine treatment center. She has provided integration and mental health support for first responders and veterans with complex PTSD through the Casey Skudin 343 Fund and, most recently, she developed expertise in practicing psychotherapy with high-acuity, dually diagnosed clients at the Harm Reduction Therapy Center in San Francisco. Jesse brings a mindfulness-based approach to her work, shaped by her spiritual care work as a Buddhist Chaplain at Mount Sinai Hospital and extensive residential Zen training at Brooklyn Zen Center and Zen Peacemakers International.

Focus Areas

  • Addiction and Substance Use
  • Anxiety
  • Couples
  • Depression
  • Harm Reduction
  • Mindfulness
  • Pivotal Life Transitions
  • Psychedelic Integration
  • Relationship Issues
  • Spirituality and Existential Meaning
  • Trauma and PTSD