Jamie’s ‘Why’
Jamie Van Auken, MA, Registered Marriage and Family Therapist Associate, E-RYT 500
I became a therapist because I was tired of incomplete therapy. After talking through my own things for many years, I still felt stuck. I had so much insight and yet, in the moments that I needed myself most, I felt lost and unseen. I needed to understand myself and I needed to understand why knowledge was not enough. I needed more to heal myself.
This need first, serendipitously, brought me to yoga. After a career as an Olympian and a professional athlete for almost two decades, I could not imagine healing without my body. At the same time, I had an overly performative and disconnected way of relating to my physical self; I could control my body but I seldom heard it. Yoga was one of the first places I learned to listen to myself as a witness and a compassionate friend. With practice, I realized that understanding myself meant understanding how energy and regulation flows within my being and tracking both the connections and the harrowing moments of disconnection. I learned that our reactions, our vigilance, our pain, and our 'mistakes' were tender spots waiting for compassion, stillness, and care. It was in the dark spaces that I truly began to move towards peace and healing.
Over time, my patterns continued to emerge, but I noticed that I was beginning to embody them differently. Sometimes, I still made the same outward choices but, being able to recognize the window of choice created a profound sense of relief and, ultimately, hope. I was slowly unsticking myself - breath by breath - heart by heart. I had heard countless times that I was not broken... now I felt it.
Fast forward to motherhood and marriage and diagnoses and deaths - it no longer felt like I was tending to just my own heart and being. Suddenly, I was thrust into the energies of relating in a way that was both profoundly tender and surprisingly reactive. A practiced yoga student, I found myself metaphorically falling out of the pose again and again. My nervous system needed to recalibrate and I need to understand why.
Now, a Master's degree and countless hours (and books, trainings, and podcasts) later, my brain and my body know the landscape better. I know why being outdoors matters. I can feel how regulation spreads between people, environments, and relationships. In this way, I think of myself as a trail-guide. I know the mile-markers but everyone gets something different out of the view. It is this synergy of being and knowing that I bring into my therapy practice.
My path to therapy was also about becoming a cycle-breaker. I've been through a lot, and I could see patterns in my families of origin that I didn't want to pass down to my children. I had to reckon with the tender knowledge that my parents did the best they could and, at the same time, there were significant lapses and traumas. I knew I wanted different for my family but I did not quite have a map for it. You can probably imagine my chagrin as I heard my mother's words stumbling out of my mouth as I feel into the weeds of parenting my first child! I quickly learned you can't break cycles through willpower or shame. With much heart (and the right people to talk to), I experienced for myself how I could change paradigms by developing a compassionate relationship with all parts of myself - even the parts that felt messy, reactive, or difficult.
Living in a family with four people who regulate entirely differently has shown me how we all come uniquely wired for connection. It has shown me that regulation and love often look very different person to person; it's taught me to deeply appreciate curiosity and individual knowing. I stopped telling my kids what 'should' be happening and learned to ask what felt real to them. Their answers broke my heart open wider; this became a refrain in our home: "I'm not sure why but I believe you. You are telling me something important..."
When one of my kiddos received a diagnosis of autism, my newfound belief became even more rooted. I felt on the deepest, most intrinsic level that neurodiversity isn't something to fix - it's something to understand and honor. I started seeing the cracks in our systems up-close and deeply personally. I delved deeper into the the landscape of neurotypes needing to learn how to support my children in ways that celebrated their unique nervous systems rather than forcing them into prescriptive, narrow, shaming-inducing molds. I knew my family was not broken. I went on to work for a non-profit that centered neurodiversity from a strengths-based, collaborative, affirming model for a year. It was in the context of supporting kids and families that I became deeply passionate about changing the conversation from deficit to variation. As it is for our outdoor friends the trees, there are so many beautiful ways to be. For all of us, our struggles aren't about being broken - they're about not recognizing that our world is much larger than the immediate environment tells us it is. I am committed to helping people understand their unique nervous system, so that they are able to claim their own strengths and find the accommodations they need to thrive in our ever-evolving world.
What I know to be true is that we feel before we think. Eighty percent of the information flowing through our nervous system goes from body to brain, not the other way around. This is why my years of 'knowing' were not enough! Lasting change requires a regulated body that is valued, heard, and tended to. Together, we will listen to and trust the wisdom our bodies are constantly communicating. The pieces you need are here already.
I became a therapist because I know what it's like to need help. I know what it's like to feel confused or at the mercy of your reactions, your habits, your sensitivities. I know what it's like to have all the "right" tools and still feel stuck. And I know the relief of finally working with someone who sees you. I have experienced the exhale of finally having your struggles understood not as pathology or personality deficit, but as intelligent adaptations that made perfect sense given what you were navigating. I am committed to seeing the whole you so you can finally exhale too.
In my practice, I want therapy to feel like you're drinking tea with someone who truly gets you - regulated, warm, and genuinely nourishing. Because when we feel safe and understood, that's when our natural capacity for healing can emerge. My job isn't to fix you. My job is to help you remember that you were never broken to begin with.
If you are curious about how our mental health therapy approach can support your mental and emotional health (or that of a loved one), you can book a cost-free, 15-minute Consultation with Jamie.
Jamie Van Auken, MA, Registered Marriage and Family Therapist Associate, E-RYT 500
Jamie is a nervous system-forward Registered Marriage and Family Therapist Associate who believes in bringing together the wisdom of the body with evidence-based therapeutic modalities to support genuine, sustainable transformation.
