About Jake

Hi, my name is Jake.

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Hopefully in this little bio section I can give you a sense of who I am and help you figure out whether sitting or walking together might feel right.

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Professionally, I am a PACFA registered counsellor. I work in an integrative way, which is a bit of a buzzword, but really it means I draw from different approaches and bring it back to the therapeutic relationship. When I first studied, I was taught about neutrality, about maintaining the role of the professional. Over time, both personally and professionally, I have had to do some unlearning. It began to feel inauthentic to sit with another person and pretend I didn't see the wider forces shaping their life, like the stress of structural oppression and the constant measuring of ourselves against ideas of normal.

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Maybe this was influenced by growing up playing punk music, being neurodiverse or queer. All experiences that shaped who I am. But part of this shift was also shaped by my work in not-for-profit disability organisations, where I focused on human rights and advocated for bodily autonomy and sexual liberation for people living with disability. Being close to those conversations about power and who gets to define what is healthy changed me. It strengthened my resistance to the idea that therapy should help people adapt to systems that harm them.

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First Nations cultures have known the value of relationship, land and community for thousands of years. I see and respect that knowledge as I continually try to decolonise my practice. Which to me feels less like a destination and more of a continual steady process of questioning what I have been taught and noticing where colonial and capitalist values quietly shape the way therapy is practiced. Therapy does not exist outside culture. It is influenced by histories of power, by ideas about productivity and normality, by assumptions about what healing should look like and how quickly it should happen. I try really hard to resist this influence by slowing the work down, reconnecting with nature, and remembering that relationship is what sustains change.

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Personally, I am playful and curious. I bring humour, warmth and sometimes a sprinkling of awkwardness into the room. Authenticity matters to me. I don’t hide behind a polished professional mask because trust grows when we meet each other honestly.

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Enough about me… what about you?

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People come to see me carrying all kinds of life experiences and stories. Here are just a few examples: surviving trauma, families that shaped us in complicated ways, the weight of capitalism, grief, sexuality, gender journeys, neurodiversity journeys, sudden ruptures that change the direction of a life overnight. Alongside these experiences are the human responses that grow around them: anxiety, depression, disconnection and isolation, self-criticism, substance use, self-harm, thoughts of not wanting to be here, masking to stay safe. In session we can get curious about these patterns, meet them with compassion and figure out what actually feels right for you now.