Ms Jade Fisher

A conversation with Jade Fisher

• What led you to choose psychotherapy or counselling as a profession?

  I came to this work through lived experience. After navigating my own complex trauma and bereavement recovery, I witnessed, in myself, that transformation is real: that mercy, relief and renewal actually exist! Supporting people I love through their own profound grief journeys showed me the power of compassionate presence.
  But in actually choosing psychotherapy there was also something inexplicable - a redirection, a pull toward this path that felt beyond my thinking mind. I stopped resisting and followed where I was being led, trusting (or at least trying to trust) that I would make my path by walking it.

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional development?

  My work is shaped by a variety of influences and passions. At the foundation is Carl Rogers' person-centered approach, dear Arnold and Amy Mindell's Process-Oriented Psychology, and Jung's understanding of Teleology -- which trust the wisdom already present in each person, and the natural inclination of each being towards wholeness.
  I'm deeply informed by eco-feminist philosophy (Currently reading Silvia Federici and Greta Gaard) and Indigenous ways of knowing (I study with the White Waratah Institute, and have studied the teachings of Wiradjuri Law/lore keeper Minimia) I am proud of my Wiradjuri and celtic ancestry, and carry with me the understanding that individual healing is inseparable from collective liberation and our relationship with the earth.
  
  Rudolf Steiner's holistic view of the human being help me hold all the non-material parts of person, and the Tao Te Ching's teachings on non-force and natural unfolding guide how I work and live -- following the river!
  
  The body's wisdom and transformational power speak to me through influences like Peter Levine's somatic trauma work and Gabrielle Roth's dynamic movement practice. I always love the places where shamanism enters praxis...
  
  I'm moved by Clarissa Pinkola Estés' understanding of the wild soul and Rilke's poetry of transformation - both remind me that the healing work is in reclaiming and renewing our essence, that which can never be destroyed.

• Which particular aspects of health or the human journey are you interested in?

  I'm drawn to the territory of profound transformation - trauma recovery and particularly post-traumatic growth, where we don't just survive but become more fully ourselves through what we've endured.
  I'm interested in the courage of not-knowing: staying curious, following the river rather than forcing the current, maintaining beginner's mind even when we think we should have all the answers. I work with people navigating dark nights of the soul - those seasons of cracking open, of grief that howls, of wounding that teaches.
  I'm fascinated by non-compliance as medicine, by what happens when we stop performing and start becoming. I care about tenderness, about hearts that dare to stay open, about belonging and community as acts of resistance. I'm interested in being surprised - in sessions where spirit directs and something wiser than our thinking minds takes the lead. I believe change happens not through control but through surrender to what's trying to be born.

• What methods do you use?

  I work primarily with Process-Oriented Psychology and Person-Centred Counselling, approaching symptoms and struggles as messengers rather than problems to eliminate.
  My method is shaped by being a natural storyteller, editor, and pattern-recognizer. I work constructively with narrative - helping people see the stories they're living, edit what no longer fits, and discover what's trying to emerge. I'm intuitive in sessions, often sensing the unsaid, the gaps, the missing pieces that want attention.
  I value hearts, tears, and truth as my primary tools. I meet people in their raw, real places. I'm also irreverent - I believe gallows humor is essential medicine. Life is absurd and painful and hilarious, often simultaneously. I hold space for all of it: the grief, the laughter, the messy middle where transformation actually happens.

• When do you think the client will start to feel that progress is being made?

  It's different for everyone, but I believe something shifts from the very first session - though I'm hesitant to call it "progress" in the traditional sense of the word. My orientation is process, not progress. Everything is already in process, always unfolding.
  What does shift? Often it's the relief of being witnessed with compassionate non-judgment. When we meet struggles, devastations, challenges and symptoms with fascination, instead of rushing to a 'solution', it can feel like a deep breath. After a lifetime of being dismissed and gaslit by others and ourselves, being truly seen and held in unconditional positive regard can be pretty profoundly humanising. I remember my own early therapy sessions making me feel like a person again!
  I believe in meaningful suffering, as a spiritual skill... From the cosmic perspective, everything is art, everyone is the artist. The light and shadow are all needed on the canvas of life.
  So "progress" might look like learning to hold your grief with tenderness, or finding some dark humour in the absurdity of the situation, or discovering that your wound carries deep wisdom.
  It's all movement from the very beginning, from the moment you make the choice to come to therapy -- it's your own being's instinctive movement towards wholeness.

• How has therapy made a difference in your life?

  I feel like I can say that therapy saved my life. I was navigating a dangerous situation with undiagnosed complex PTSD - white-knuckling through each day, overwhelmed by trauma symptoms I couldn't understand or name.
  
  My therapist held space for me to fall apart and come back together. She believed in me when I was only a shell, held my potential when I'd lost sight of it. She offered trustworthy guidance when I had no centre.
  
  Through therapy, I discovered my own capacity for healing - and something larger, a spiritual medicine that began working through me in unexpected ways. That experience cracked opened my heart and changed my orientation to life. It's why I'm here, doing this work. I know what it means to be shredded and hollowed out by an experience, and then, miraculously, loved back to wholeness.

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

  What moves me most is the sweetness in every person who walks through my door - their tenderness, their courage to show up, the purity of their longing to heal. It's the heart's capacity for tenderness that cracks me open, that speaks of the business of being alive and being human to me.
  
  I love being close to each person's medicine, because I've learned that what we need is always seeking us. In session, we create the conditions for that meeting to happen. I get to witness people receiving their own wisdom, their own healing.
  
  This work opens my heart and my inner artist. It deepens my compassion, teaches me constantly. I love seeing hard work rewarded - when patterns shift, when people make changes they didn't think possible, and I get the privilege of witnessing it unfold in real time.
  
  I love being with stories, being with people. It's an honour. I consider myself always a student, always learning.

• Do you ever have 'bad hair' days?

  All the time. I'm wracked with the same guilt, inner criticism, challenges, and foibles as the next person. I have days where my energy is low, where I question everything, where I'm just hanging on by a thread.
  Sometimes I do good self-care and sometimes I don't. Mostly I try to ride the wave, look for something poetic in my suffering, give love from my broken heart to a bird I see or a tree waving in the wind.
  We're all works in progress. (or works in PROCESS) All of us. We're just walking each other home.

• What do you think is the most significant problem we face, in the world today?

  Disconnection. We've lost reciprocity and right relationship - with Earth, with each other, with ourselves, with the more-than-human world.
  Our dominant paradigm is "power over" rather than "power with" - exploitation rather than reciprocity. This patriarchal model has created systems (capitalism, imperialism, rigid hierarchies) that wound everyone, even those who appear to benefit. We're all suffering from severed connection.
  The way I'm learning to grow, and what I bring to my work, is coming back into relationship with Earth and with what sustains us. Individual healing and collective healing are woven together - we can't truly thrive while disconnected from the living systems we're part of.

• Can you share the name of a book, film, song, event or work of art that inspires you?

  Silvia Federici's "Caliban and the Witch."
  
  Reading her explanation of the historical "enclosure of the commons" felt like unlocking body memory - I finally had language for something I'd always felt but couldn't name: that all the land and water around me was owned, controlled, mostly forbidden -- but this is so wrong, unnatural, a loss of freedom I could not language...
  
  Federici traces how capitalism emerged in Europe through violent privatisation of public (common) land - severing the people's collective relationship to the land and breaking the back of their self-sustaining systems, all done to drive people into wage labour against their wills.
  
  For someone who always felt like a misfit in conventional work structures, this book gave me context and validation. It's meticulously researched, accessibly written, and the history feels so deeply personal.
  
  It affirmed more of how I understand healing: our individual struggles are inseparable from collective wounds and collective liberation.