David Ackerman
Calm, practical therapy for everyday struggles
- Credentials
- LCSW
- Experience
- 22 years
- Licensed in
- New York
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About David
David Ackerman is a licensed clinical social worker with 22 years of practice in New York. He focuses on helping people who are feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, grief, or life transitions. He also works with concerns around relationships, parenting, addiction, and identity issues.
His tone with clients is warm and straightforward, aiming to make hard conversations feel manageable. He uses practical, face-to-face methods that help people notice what matters to them and take small steps toward change.
Background and approach
Sessions tend to be interactive and supportive, with a mix of listening, reflection, and hands-on strategies. The goal is to build skills for coping with emotions, improving communication, and handling setbacks. Over two decades of clinical work have included experience with trauma and emotional abuse, chronic mental health conditions, eating and personality-related issues, and challenges tied to illness or aging.
That background gives him familiarity with complex, layered problems that don’t always fit a single label. David combines Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - which focuses on values and committed action - with client-centered listening and emotionally-focused methods that help people describe and shift painful patterns. He also draws on motivational interviewing and narrative techniques to support practical change and clearer self-understanding.
He aims to form a collaborative working relationship, where goals are shaped together and progress is checked regularly. People who prefer a direct but empathetic approach often find his style accessible and useful.
How his approaches translate to online therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, helps people clarify what matters to them and take small, value-driven steps even when feelings are difficult. It is often useful for stress, anxiety, life changes, and ongoing emotional struggles. Client-Centered Therapy focuses on empathetic listening and creating a respectful space so people can find their own solutions; it supports self-exploration and building confidence. Emotionally-Focused Therapy aims to help people identify and shift recurring emotional patterns, which can improve closeness and reduce reactive cycles.Choosing the right approach is part of the process. He works collaboratively with each person to decide which methods fit their goals and preferences. That might mean starting with one approach and adding techniques from others as needs change.
Online sessions via video, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging make therapy more flexible. Video calls are useful for face-to-face conversation, phone sessions work well for simpler check-ins, and chat or messaging can support brief check-ins or written reflection between sessions. These options help people fit therapy into busy lives and stay connected when in-person visits aren’t possible.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Less about arguing with difficult thoughts, more about loosening their grip and acting on what matters to you anyway. Values and committed action carry the work, which suits conversation at a distance.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)
Attends to the emotions underneath a recurring argument or distance, and to the attachment needs driving them. Often used where a relationship keeps returning to the same painful loop.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Parenting issues
Also works with
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Anger management
- Antisocial personality
- Attachment issues
- Avoidant personality
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Cancer
- Career difficulties
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Co-morbidity
- Coaching
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Dependent personality
- Divorce and separation
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Narcissism
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Paranoia
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self esteem
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 22 years
- Licensed
- New York
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to David
- Takes a few minutes
- Nothing to set up just to look
- Stop at any point