About Jessica
Here is a bit about me to help you decide if I am the therapist for you.
Holistic Healthcare is what makes me tick most. Other interests, like genealogy and my desire to understand my ancestors’ stories, took flight from my need to understand the trans-generational transmission of trauma within my family. I want to understand what makes us ill in the first place, and believe in the age-old saying that, where possible, “Prevention is Better than Cure”.
First, I became a Nutritional Therapist and Naturopath, and later, a Counsellor and Human Potential Coach. My most recent mission has been to create more affordable ways for people to access therapy. With that in mind, I will be making my professional coaching factsheets, normally only available to my clients, available on this website as accessible downloads for a small fee (coming soon). I have also learnt to read The Tarot and now provide one-off sessions, but more of that here.
I set up Nurture Health to provide a process of health and wellbeing empowerment. Together we can investigate how best to help you understand yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and thus begin a process of healing. Improved mental health can often lead to better physical health, and with that extra connection to our spiritual being, we are on track to be the best version of ourselves.
These are my qualifications:
- CPPD Counselling School – Advanced Diploma Humanistic Integrative Counselling
- Academy of Human Potential – Diploma Human Potential Coaching
- Tarot Card Reader, trained by Pete MacDonald, three times winner of the prestigious Prix de Tarot
- College of Naturopathic Medicine – Diploma Naturopathic Nutrition
- College of Naturopathic Medicine – Diploma Naturopathy
- Healing Herbs – Certificate in using Bach Flower Remedies
- BSc(Hons) – Estate Management and Valuation (my early career was as a Chartered Surveyor)
About Nurture Health
Nurture Health was born out of my studies at the College of Naturopathic Medicine in London, which began in 2004. Back then I was studying Naturopathic Nutrition, believing that the answer to good health lay at the door of our physicality – I reasoned that if we understood the science behind the fuel we were putting into our bodies (and changed our eating behaviours accordingly), and also understood the impact of other lifestyle factors such as exercise and minimising exposure to environmental toxins, then good health would follow. That did not turn out to be my experience. Whilst those three factors are an important part of what it is to be healthy, I discovered that we cannot engage exclusively with our physical health whilst ignoring our mental and spiritual well being; that is, if we want to be truly well. In order to thrive, (rather than survive) we must address all aspects. That is when I decided to train as a Counsellor. In the middle of that training I met Dr. Mark Atkinson, a medical doctor who had integrated complementary medicine into his practice, and was so inspired that I went on to train with him as well as a Human Potential Life Coach. Nearly 20 years later, and having made personal development my own personal byword, I have come to integrate everything I have learned, which is why I call myself an Holistic Integrated Human Potential Coach/Counsellor.
About my blog
Many people suffer from the aftermath of childhood trauma, be it to a greater or lesser extent, which impacts on how they show up in the world. Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) can set up maldadaptions of the nervous system that, at best, cause varying degrees of anxiety states, and in more extreme cases this can lead to physical illness as well. If this is you, then welcome to my blog. It is my intention to shine a light into this dark corner of mental health and provide a resource to help you navigate your way to a more relaxed, healthy, confident, joyful you.
Like others before me, I am writing a book about my healing journey. Following the ill health of my early to mid adulthood, (riding on the back of childhood trauma), I decided to share the different ways of healing that I have found. My physical health had suffered, and for a long while I tackled it the way we are all familiar with, one ailment at a time, patching up the presenting symptoms, without looking at the whole picture. The orthodox medical model does not encourage an holistic approach. It treats the body in a fragmented, system-based fashion and much can fall through the cracks. So, for me, one day in 2004, I made a decision that would start to turn all that around. I enrolled on a Nutritional Therapy and Naturopathy course at The College of Naturopathic Medicine in London.
The information that I learned helped me to turn the juggernaut, and years down the line I can say I have reclaimed my health. I initially looked to the physical, but soon realised I had to embrace my mental, emotional and spiritual health too before progress could be made. The book is about 40% written, and one day I may finish it, but in the interim I have decided to write this blog as well.
Childhood trauma is sometimes referred to as Developmental or Relational trauma. Its impact, Complex PTSD, is the reason I had to look wide to find a way to heal. C-PTSD is distinct from the more widely understood PTSD. The latter can arise, but not always, from acute traumatic experience, such as surviving a natural disaster or the ravages of war. C-PTSD is different in that it occurs during childhood, at a time of brain and nervous system development, as a result of adverse childhood experience (ACE). All children are vulnerable and totally dependant on the goodwill of the adults in their life for their wellbeing, and they will flounder if they have to adapt themselves to fit in with a less than ideal environment. Those adaptations can have a long reach into adulthood impacting both mental and physical health.
PTSD and C-PTSD are not mutually exclusive, and can impact on one another, such as when someone experiences a traumatic event as an adult, who has suffered ACE as a child. In fact, C-PTSD is often the bedrock that means one person will experience PTSD when another, in the same circumstance, will not.
About Integrated Human Potential Life Coaching/Counselling
I am a BACP registered Humanistic Integrative Counsellor and a Human Potential Life Coach registered with the Association for Coaches. There is a current movement amongst those of us that are qualified in both Coaching and Counselling disciplines to integrate the two, to provide the best of both worlds in one offering. This is what I can offer you, with the added support of a Tarot card reading, if that is what you would like. The Tarot is an optional extra, or a stand-alone. To find out more about how I include it click here.
Below is a little bit about the Coaching and Counselling I am trained in, to help you better understand how this can help you.
Human Potential Coaching
Let us start with an analogy! Life is like a game of Snakes and Ladders! With our Thinking, and maybe Feelings too, we set ourselves goals and then set off to climb the Ladders of life to achieve them. Every age and stage has its own aspirations and we can feel excited, or fearful, setting out to reach those milestones. But life isn’t all an upward trajectory! On the way, we step on those Snakes (our triggers) and setbacks occur. Those Snakes catch us unawares (our unconscious conditioning) and send us tumbling down the board. At worse, we get stuck.
Human Potential Coaching sets the goals to climb the ladders, but also recognizes the need to work with the triggers that cause the setbacks too. The setbacks can be unforeseen circumstances from our external environment, but some of the biggest are those from our own internal world. For instance, the Inner Critic that whispers, “What makes you think you can achieve that? You’ve never been any good, why do you think this should be any different? Remember that time when…or the Controller that likes to keep you in your comfort zone. We each have a whole cast of Selves waiting to egg us on and trip us up! Our confident self, our optimistic self, and our courageous self may all push us forward, but then out steps the self-saboteur, the inner critic and the fearful self, who hold us back. A key component of this Coaching Method is working with the Psychology of the Selves along with the more traditional aspects of coaching.
The more traditional Life Coaching methodology, by contrast, has its focus on the Ladders of life. It uses the Conscious Mind to set goals and identify unhelpful thoughts and behaviours that require change in order to effect desirable outcomes. It then requires a large dose of willpower to put it all into practice and keep the ball rolling. In short, it is a Cognitive Behavioural method that looks to climb those Life Ladders operating from the Head/Conscious Mind only. Anyone who has ever been on a diet knows how willpower can ultimately fail you! It is all too easy to fall off the wagon.
Human Potential Coaching recognizes that we all operate through the filters of our Psychological Conditioning. This is mostly unconscious and has a grip on how we behave and how we think without our even knowing it. What are your self-limiting beliefs? What happened, and what did you then decide about yourself that now no longer serves you? The way our cast of Selves interact, to help or to hinder, will depend on our conditioning from childhood. By raising awareness and understanding around our conditioning, and by integrating those parts that we have denied, we can effect more deep-seated change. This is better than using our willpower alone to override current patterns.
Human Potential Coaching goes beyond the normal perceptions of what a Life Coach is. It uses energetic medicine to help move along blocked energy held in the body from past traumas, thus releasing newfound energies to engage with what you want to achieve. The client also learns how to access their personal insights and inspiration by learning to work with their heart and gut centres too. In order to be our True Selves, we need to be in alignment with our head’s ability to think and process, our heart’s intuition, and our gut instinct. When we are stressed (and most people are) we go up into our heads, feel tense, and can get stuck in fear and worry. We get caught up in our thoughts, where thoughts breed more thoughts until they take on a life of their own and we can lose sight of what is real. We also lose sight of our gut instinct and our heart’s intuition. The joy of Human Potential Coaching is that it guides us back to our True Self where we can discover our True Potential and Happiness.
Humanistic Integrative Counselling
If you are new to the world of psychotherapy, then the terminology “Humanistic Integrative” may sound baffling, so I would like to clarify a little of what it means.
Humanistic
Humanistic practitioners are distinct from Psychodynamic ones and Behaviourists simply by their approach. Humanists assume from the outset, your wholeness and uniqueness, that people have free will, and are motivated to achieve their potential and self-actualise. Humanists believe that people are basically good, and have an innate need to make themselves and the world better.
Integrative
The “integrative” in this context involves the integration of psychodynamics (working with the unconscious) and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Some models embrace both humanistic and psychodynamic principles working with the best of both worlds.
My training embraced several models of psychotherapy – Carl Roger’s Person-Centred approach, Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis, Gestalt, Transpersonal psychotherapy, Psychodynamics, CBT and Petruska Clarkson’s 5 relationship model.
Integrating Naturopathy
There is one other form of integration that defines who I am as a practitioner, and that is the integration of naturopathic principles. This includes, amongst other things, the assumption of the wholeness of who we are as mind, body and spirit.
Psychotherapy as a talking cure (mind) is sometimes criticised for not creating change. To ignore the body and how it holds our past experience is to ignore an important element. Recognising this, I went on to train in Embodied Relational Therapy.
As part of my own personal development I have worked with several other models including Family Constellations (what do we hold that belongs with our ancestors?), Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (connecting with our body wisdom) and Internal Family Systems (working with the different parts of our identity that make up the whole), which have all influenced who I am as a practitioner.
All that said, it has been shown that therapeutic benefit is derived more from the relationship you will build with your therapist than any model of therapy, be it coaching or counselling, they proclaim to use.
I hope the explanations above are helpful to you, and look forward to meeting you should you decide to take the next step.
“From the moment that I started working with Jessica, I knew that I had found someone I could fully trust. Jessica listens with compassion and guided me with true inner wisdom. Her enquiries were gentle but purposeful and got me to look at things in a different way. There are no words to adequately thank her for all she has done for me.”
“Jessica has adopted the conventional Tarot system to compliment and enhance her therapeutic and psychological practice. Her methodology is unique, creating a healing experience that is both spiritually and psychologically life-affirming.”
“Working with Jessica has enabled me to recognise, then work to release past trauma, in a way which feels natural and safe. Her warm and wise approach, along with her astute insight is reassuring and impressive.”
“As someone who has been in therapy for a number of years, I found one Tarot reading with Jessica to be incredibly insightful and helpful to my personal journey. The cards provided a visual path into the unconscious. What was revealed would have taken many sessions of peeling through the onion layers to get to in my conventional therapy.”
“I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Tarot reading but immediately felt at ease with Jessica. It was a collaborative experience guided by the cards, which provided me with meaningful insights and deeper understanding of my current situation. Jessica is intuitive, empathetic, and a truly gifted therapist/reader. I highly recommend using the Tarot as a platform to explore psychological growth and healing.”
“From the moment that I started working with Jessica, I knew that I had found someone I could fully trust. Jessica listens with compassion and guided me with true inner wisdom. Her enquiries were gentle but purposeful and got me to look at things in a different way. There are no words to adequately thank her for all she has done for me.”
“Jessica has adopted the conventional Tarot system to compliment and enhance her therapeutic and psychological practice. Her methodology is unique, creating a healing experience that is both spiritually and psychologically life-affirming.”
“Working with Jessica has enabled me to recognise, then work to release past trauma, in a way which feels natural and safe. Her warm and wise approach, along with her astute insight is reassuring and impressive.”
“As someone who has been in therapy for a number of years, I found one Tarot reading with Jessica to be incredibly insightful and helpful to my personal journey. The cards provided a visual path into the unconscious. What was revealed would have taken many sessions of peeling through the onion layers to get to in my conventional therapy.”
“I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Tarot reading but immediately felt at ease with Jessica. It was a collaborative experience guided by the cards, which provided me with meaningful insights and deeper understanding of my current situation. Jessica is intuitive, empathetic, and a truly gifted therapist/reader. I highly recommend using the Tarot as a platform to explore psychological growth and healing.”