Jen OBryan

A conversation with Jen OBryan

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

  Out of my own personal experience of many years of therapy for childhood trauma and neglect, then grief.
  I'm passionate about somatic work, that is work that takes us beyond talking. My own experience has shown me that working with what is held in our body is essential to healing.
  I have not found the medical model of health and mental health helpful, l believe what is more important is to understand what happened to us not what is wrong with us.

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional development?

  I have a holistic view of the human being based on my life experience and my experience of working in health care for over 40 years.
  I believe we are the sum of our experiences, our childhood, our relationships and the society we grow up in.
  My philosophy is informed by Buddhism, and anthroposophy.
  I'm a humanist at heart and don't see myself as a mainstream health professional.
  I feel drawn to witchcraft and shamanic healing. I believe these spiritual practices are guides to another world of understanding. I see myself as a bit of an outcast, rebel in the world and probably would have been a witch in a previous life.

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

  I am very interested in childhood experiences and how they form us, particularly our attachment style. Because of my own experience of childhood trauma and neglect and what is see in the human experience I know that we can transform our suffering and hurt and become who we are truly meant to be.
  I am interested in why we are here on the earth in this body and what our true purpose is. I know that my purpose has been to transform generations of trauma in my family of origin.
  I haven't managed it in this life time but my children might!

• What methods do you use?

  I am a deep listener. I listen with all of myself, body mind and soul.
  I believe that being truly heard is the beginning of the path to healing because we can then listen to our own voice and know ourselves more deeply.
  I utilise Breathwork or conscious connected breathing to help people connect to body held memories, sensations and traumas. I then help people to integrate this into their current life experiences.
  I love internal family systems approach which acknowledges the many parts of who we are and how we function.
  I am informed by attachment theory to help people understand their family of origin story and how that affects them and their relationships now.

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

  From my experience this varies with individual experiences but I have trust and faith in peoples own internal systems that know when they feel like they are understanding themselves more deeply and can change their way of being in the world to their satisfaction.

• How has therapy made a difference in your life?

  Having had therapy on and off for over 30 years it has helped me fully understand myself with my mind but more importantly then with my body and soul.
  Breathwork in particular has helped me to work more deeply into traumas in my body and transform what I know was the residual suffering I couldn't let go of.
  For example, shame. I held this emotion deep inside of me from my childhood fear and trauma and from my mother's inability to transform her own shame. Breathing into this feeling, raging with it and feeling the shutdown in me and having a therapist hold that space around the shame without judgement helped me accept it and allow it.
  I have so much more acceptance of myself and self compassion.

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

  I love being able to sit with someone and truly hold the space of acceptance and understanding.
  I love really listening to people's stories about their life and really helping them to feel heard and not judged.
  I love it when people can hear something in their body, know it more deeply and work with it.

• Do you ever have 'bad hair' days?

  Of course I do I am only human and have days when I don't like myself or just feel flat and not good enough. I hold myself gently now during these days and have learnt to accept myself "warts and all"!
  I don't think I have it all "worked out" and that is what makes me a good therapist because I am still working on it.
  I am who I am and authenticity is important to me.

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

  That we are destroying the planet with greed and lack of care about our future. We have no long term focus on what we are doing to the earth because we are focused on short term immediate gratification. I wish we could do more as individuals to really do something daily to take care of the earth before we die.
  We could also do more to be kind to everyone and ourselves. Kindness is an antidote to so much suffering and we could practice it daily.
  Listening to each other, I mean really listening without judgement is also a big issue in our society. We would do well to try to listen to others even when we don't like what we hear.

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

  great question.!
  I am truly inspired by the works of Shakespeare.
  I make sure I see his plays every year and still learn new things from them even when I have seen them many times over.
  His understanding of human nature, suffering, emotions and relationships was so deep and his language (even if I have to listen hard to understand !) was so beautiful.
  I just saw Hamnet, the film inspired by the book about Shakespeare's loss of his son. So beautiful and inspiring and best of all it was focused on the women in the story and written and directed by a woman!