MY STORY
Jessica Cassell, BSW, RSW, MSW
I’ve been acutely aware of suffering for as long as I can remember. Growing up in a low-income and single-parent household impacted by gender-based violence, intergenerational trauma, poverty, addiction and mental illness, in communities where the families around me were also struggling in their own ways, it always felt like everyone around me was suffering. I wanted to know why and I wanted to do something about it. I am driven by a deep desire to alleviate suffering for others both at the individual and collective levels. This eventually led me to the profession of social work as well as to activism.
Through my personal experience, education and activism, I came to understand that mental health cannot be understood separately from our environments. Much of what seems "wrong" with us, are adaptations to external pressures and stressors. But time and time again I have heard from people who have had their emotional distress pathologized, seen as something wrong with them as individuals, rather than seeing their distress in their personal and social context. I had it happen to me when I tried to seek out counselling while in university because I was struggling with depression and anxiety. I was dismissively told I need to change my negative thinking and organize my time better. The fact that I was struggling with poverty, working three jobs on top of full-time school, drowning in debt, and that I had experienced several traumatic losses and crises among other challenges, went ignored. It was overwhelmingly invalidating and as a result it would be several years before I would try seeking out therapy again.
I’ve heard of many similar experiences from others, and I was motivated to launch this private practice because I wanted to support people in processing painful experiences in a non-pathologizing way. Rather than viewing your challenges as personal deficits, we will seek to understand their origins and how you came to adapt to life experiences. Those adaptations may not be serving you any longer, but viewing them as part of your survival and understanding their function opens the door to true healing and self compassion.
When we situate our personal struggles in the context of our life experiences, interpersonal relationships and the broader social and economic system, we stop seeing ourselves as isolated individuals, at fault for our own suffering, and begin to see ourselves in our humanity, connected to all others and our environment. I strive for a therapeutic approach that views the whole person in their environment and social world and supports individual healing and growth as part of collective liberation.
MY APPROACHES TO THERAPY
I am what would be called an "eclectic" or "integrative" therapist, meaning that I draw from multiple therapeutic models to meet the needs of each person rather than practising from one model. I just don't think any one model fully captures the complexity of the human experience, ya know?! This isn't an exhaustive list, but here are some of my top influences.
EMOTION FOCUSED THERAPY
EFT emphasizes emotional processing and transformation as the main vehicle of healing. From an EFT perspective, emotional distress can persist when we do not process painful emotional events, leading us to become stuck in unhelpful emotional states that were once adaptive but are no longer serving our needs. A series of experiential exercises take place in session to help people uncover the roots to their emotional suffering, become aware of and attune to their emotional experience, and to process and transform emotional states which they may be stuck in and to construct new meaning of their experiences and access more empowering emotional states. For example, with EFT one might move from being stuck in shame, accompanied with the narrative
"I am inherently worthless" to accessing empowered anger and accepting "What happened to me wasn't fair and I deserved better".
ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY
ACT supports individuals with developing mindful awareness of thoughts and emotions and how we act on them. The acceptance component of ACT involves allowing uncomfortable thoughts and feelings without getting tangled up in them or engaging in self-defeating behaviours in an attempt to avoid them. The commitment aspect of ACT involves determining your values and using them as a compass to guide action.
INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS
IFS is a non-pathologizing approach to psychotherapy which views each person as a "system" composed of "parts" or sub-personalities in addition to the core Self. Some of our parts carry our emotional wounds, and others exist to manage life challenges and protect us from the pain of our wounded parts. A basic premise of IFS is that all parts have good intentions for the self, even if their actions or effects are misguided or cause suffering. IFS focuses on healing wounded parts and restoring inner harmony by changing the dynamics that create discord among the sub-personalities and the Self.
BRAINSPOTTING
Brainspotting Therapy (BSP) is a brain-body based therapy that helps people rapidly process and release trauma and emotional distress by accessing spots in the visual field that correlate to regions of the subcortical brain where procedural memories of trauma or other stressors have been trapped. BSP can be particularly appealing for those who have found talk therapy to be ineffective or who do not wish to relive a traumatic experience by verbally retelling it.
EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS
Present
REGISTERED SOCIAL WORKER
I am a Registered Social Worker with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (registration #835696) as well as through the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers (registration #9755)
2014
MASTER OF SOCIAL WORK
I graduated with my MSW from Ryerson University.
2013
BACHELOR OF SOCIAL WORK
I completed my BSW at Ryerson University.
TRAINING AND CERTIFICATIONS
WORKING WITH EMOTIONS IN DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY
Centre for Psychology and Emotional Health
WORKING WITH SELF-INTERRUPTIVE PROCESSES, EMOTIONAL BLOCKS AND AVOIDANCE OF EMOTIONS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
Centre for Psychology and Emotional Health
ASSESS, REGULATE, ACTIVATE, AND TRANSFORM EMOTIONS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
Centre for Psychology and Emotional Health
DBT SKILLS
Psychwire
GRIEF LITERACY
Being Here, Human
GROUNDING THE HEART, MIND AND BODY: HELP DYSREGULATED CLIENTS GROUND THEMSELVES AND REGAIN A SENSE OF SELF-CONTROL AND SELF-EFFICACY
Sick Kids Centre for Community Mental Health
SOLUTION-FOCUSED THERAPY CERTIFICATION LEVEL 2
Association for Psychological Therapies
IFS AND TRAUMA
Mission: Empowerment!
BRAINSPOTTING PHASE 1
Canadian Prairies Institute for Midbrain Therapies