Conversations with Nathalie Dubois

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathalie Dubois.

Hi Nathalie, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
For many years, my life was very different from what it is today.

I was born and raised in Chile and originally trained as a business engineer. I spent around 15 years working in the real estate and construction industry, eventually holding leadership positions and becoming very involved in initiatives supporting women in a traditionally male-dominated sector. From the outside, I had built what looked like a very successful career: responsibility, recognition, professional growth, and a clear path ahead.

But at some point, I began to realize that professional success did not automatically translate into feeling fulfilled or deeply connected to myself.

That question — “Is this really the life I want to keep building?” — became the beginning of a much bigger personal journey.

I started exploring psychology, coaching, Gestalt therapy, transpersonal psychology, systemic work, hypnosis, and other approaches to personal development. At first, I was simply trying to understand myself better. But the more I learned, the more fascinated I became by the emotional world: why we repeat certain patterns, why intelligent and capable people can still feel lost in relationships, why we struggle to set boundaries, and why sometimes thinking harder is simply not enough to create change.

Eventually, I made one of the biggest decisions of my life: I left the corporate path I had spent years building and moved to Barcelona, where I continued my therapeutic training and began creating a new professional chapter.

Today, I work as a therapist and created **Ingeniosa Alma**, a space where I accompany mainly women who are going through emotional transitions — relationship difficulties, breakups, major life decisions, self-demand, family patterns, or moments when the life they have built no longer feels aligned with who they are becoming.

Interestingly, I don’t feel that I abandoned my first career. I brought it with me.

My analytical side as an engineer and my therapeutic side now work together. I love helping people understand what is happening to them, but also helping them move beyond understanding and actually experience something different in their lives.

My own journey has taught me that sometimes growth means questioning the identity that once made us feel safe. It can mean leaving behind a version of ourselves that was successful, capable, and even admired, in order to discover something more authentic underneath.

And I think that is at the heart of the work I do today: helping people move from living according to expectations toward living with greater awareness, freedom, and emotional truth.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It definitely has not been a completely smooth road.

One of the biggest challenges was leaving behind an identity that had taken me many years to build. I had a stable career, leadership positions, professional recognition, and a clear place in my industry. Walking away from that meant not only changing jobs — it meant questioning who I was without all of those titles and achievements.

Moving from Chile to Barcelona was another major transition. Starting again in a new country, building a new professional network, continuing my training, and creating a therapeutic practice from the ground up required a lot of patience and humility. There were moments when I had to remind myself that starting over does not mean going backwards.

I also had to confront my own relationship with achievement and self-demand. For many years, I was very comfortable in environments where effort, productivity, and results were highly valued. In the therapeutic world, I discovered that not everything can be solved by working harder or thinking more. Sometimes growth requires slowing down, feeling, tolerating uncertainty, and allowing things to unfold differently.

Another challenge has been trusting that all the different parts of my background actually belong together. For a while, I wondered whether being an engineer and a therapist were two completely separate identities. Today, I see that they are part of the same story. My structured and analytical mind helps me understand patterns, while my therapeutic training helps me work with what cannot always be explained logically.

Like most people, I have also gone through personal transitions, relationship changes, doubts, and moments of having to let go of plans I thought my life would follow. Those experiences have made my work much more human. They have taught me that transformation is rarely linear.

I think one of the most important lessons has been learning that courage is not always making a dramatic change. Sometimes courage is staying with the uncertainty long enough to hear what is actually true for you — and then being willing to act on it.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Today, my work is focused on therapeutic accompaniment for people who are going through emotionally demanding moments in their lives.

Through **Ingeniosa Alma**, I work mainly with women who are highly capable, responsible, and often very used to “holding everything together,” but who may feel overwhelmed in their relationships, disconnected from themselves, trapped in overthinking, or exhausted by constantly trying to do everything right.

Many of the people who come to me are navigating relationship difficulties, breakups, major decisions, family patterns, self-demand, emotional dependency, difficulty setting boundaries, or that strange feeling of having achieved a lot externally while still feeling that something is missing internally.

My approach is integrative. I bring together Gestalt therapy, transpersonal psychology, systemic work, hypnosis, coaching, and body and emotional awareness. I don’t believe that one single method works for everyone, so I try to understand what each person needs and work from there.

One of the ideas at the center of my work is that **not everything can be solved by thinking more**. Many of my clients are extremely intelligent and analytical. They already understand a lot about themselves, but understanding something intellectually does not always change the emotional pattern. My work is about helping them move from knowing to experiencing, from analyzing to actually creating a different relationship with themselves and with others.

I think what sets me apart is also my own professional background. I spent many years in business, leadership, and the corporate world before becoming a therapist. I understand ambition, responsibility, performance, and the pressure that comes with being someone others rely on. I can speak both languages: the structured, practical world and the emotional, intuitive one.

I am especially proud when I see a woman begin to take her place in her own life again — when she stops abandoning herself to maintain a relationship, starts setting boundaries without so much guilt, makes a difficult decision, or reconnects with a part of herself that had been hidden under expectations and responsibilities.

For me, therapy is not about becoming a completely different person. It is about becoming more fully yourself.

That is probably what I want Ingeniosa Alma to represent: a space where people can understand their patterns, but also discover more freedom in the way they choose to live, love, and relate to themselves.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
I would say: don’t wait until you feel completely ready.

When I started changing direction professionally, I thought I needed to have everything figured out first — the perfect plan, enough training, enough certainty, enough confidence. But most meaningful transitions don’t happen that way. Clarity often comes after you begin moving.

I also wish I had understood earlier that starting again does not erase everything you have already built. Your previous experiences come with you. Skills, relationships, mistakes, leadership, resilience — all of it becomes part of what you are creating next.

Another important lesson has been not to compare the beginning of your journey with someone else’s middle. It is very easy to look around and feel behind, especially when you are building something new. But every person has a different rhythm.

I would also encourage people to stay curious and keep learning, but not to hide forever behind preparation. At some point, you have to allow yourself to practice, be visible, make mistakes, receive feedback, and evolve.

And finally, I think it is important to ask yourself not only, “Can I succeed at this?” but also, “Does this life feel like mine?”

Success can look very good from the outside and still feel empty if it is disconnected from who you are becoming. I wish I had learned earlier that changing your mind, changing direction, or letting go of an old identity is not failure. Sometimes it is exactly what growth looks like.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ingeniosaalma.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ingeniosa_alma/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathalie-dubois-jarpa/