Jess Tyrrell

Psychotherapist | Clinical Social Worker

Many people believe that seeing a psychotherapist is only for people suffering from a mental illness, so you might be surprised to learn that psychotherapy has a multitude of benefits for everyone. Therapy is not only treating mental health problems. Therapy is about facilitating healing, wellness and growth and can have a huge influence in our personal, relational, and vocational spheres of life, no matter what our circumstances.

Trauma, from the Greek for “wound”, is not what happens to you; it is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you … It is not the blow on the head, but the concussion I get. That is the good news. If my trauma was that I grew up with an absent parent, for example, that will never not have happened. But if the wound was that I decided as a result that I wasn’t worthwhile as a human being, I wasn’t lovable, that’s a wound that can heal at any time. We all have had some degree of trauma in our lives that led to brilliant adaptations in our behaviour, but we may not realise it; trauma comes in many shapes and sizes, and it may not be what you think of as “trauma.” Just a few examples of how trauma shows up are: 

• ​people pleasing
• persistently putting others’ need before our own
• being highly self-critical
• anxiety of all sorts, including social anxiety
• codependency in relationships
• depression
• fear of abandonment
• under-functioning
• over-functioning or perfectionism
• anger issues
• resentment
• burnout
• difficulty trusting others
• hypervigilance
• environmental sensitivities
• dissociation of all degrees and flavours
• substance abuse/numbing
• disordered eating
• self-sabotage
• chronic disease and pain
• intergenerational patterns of abuse

I engage in “depth-oriented” therapy, as opposed to focusing solely on behaviours, thoughts, or solutions. That is, I don’t work from a CBT, DBT, or Solutions Focused approach. I believe that working through the underlying adaptations that keep you feeling stuck has a much higher chance of successfully producing real growth.

Practice Number: 0943339
Reg Number: SW1024292