Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenny Walters.
Jenny, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
It’s been a circuitous path. As a girl I spent a lot of time alone playing make believe. Looking back, I see that the things that I found interesting were relationships. I never watched cartoons, they weren’t real enough, but I lived for after school specials. Any book where the protagonist was sick or dying or heartbroken was my cup of tea. I remember the titles – Will I Ever Dance Again? The Girl in the Plastic Cage (she had scoliosis), If I Die Before I Wake. Such drama! So clearly there was an early interest in story, myth, mortality and archetypes and how we as humans relate to each other, ourselves, the world, how we traverse suffering. I find all of that endlessly fascinating.
I first started exploring this by way of art making. I did the whole art school thing with a BFA and then a Master of Fine Arts I completed in Chicago. I loved meaning making. I loved taking big feelings and articulating them visually, making them bite sized. But the pursuit of a career in art wasn’t something I enjoyed at all. The only part I really cared about was making the internal, external.
I had an inkling the healing arts were calling me but I felt a lot of shame in quitting the pursuit of an art career. It felt like failure. I had a rather magical moment with a healer who looked me in the eyes and said, you know you are a healer right? In that moment I felt peace and a deep knowing. I decided to pursue a career as a therapist. I earned a Master’s Degree in Depth Psychology and Counseling at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Pacifica is a Jungian school and studying psyche by way of the imaginal, myth and symbol felt right in line with all the best parts of art making. When I began working with clients I knew I had found my calling. Here we were together making their internal external and known for us to hold together and make sense of.
Has it been a smooth road?
I would not call it a smooth road, but my bumps are mine and I wouldn’t trade them for anything different. As a child, into my late teens and throughout my 20’s I struggled with depression and anxiety, trouble feeling close and safe with people, experiencing the world as a place I didn’t belong. This is not a unique experience but when you are in it, it is incredibly isolating and frightening. Had I not encountered these feelings though, I could not do the work I do now. The shadows don’t scare me anymore and I’ve experienced the kind of peace one finds when you walk through the fire, instead of circling it and avoiding it. Accompanying others as they bravely walk through their scariest stuff is an honor and I’m excited to hold space for them knowing what’s waiting on the other side of this kind of courageous work.
Moving to Los Angeles was an extremely rough transition. I was quite naive and just took a leap of faith when I came here. I remember crying on my very long nightly commute home and wondering what I had done in coming here. But at the same time something felt like home. It felt like a necessary labor before a re-birth.
The road to becoming a psychotherapist is inherently bumpy. There are a lot of hoops, long hours and low pay as you work toward licensure. I had a wonderful mentor who taught me so much, helped me grow and expand and confront my own unconscious stuff so that I could in turn help others to do the same. That was not always easy. There’s a reason people are afraid to go to therapy – it can feel so scary to turn toward difficult feelings, to encounter difficult ideas about yourself. And it’s no different for therapists. But in the end, you cannot be a good psychotherapist if you are not willing to do your own work. How could I possibly help others value and understand their own internal experience if I didn’t explore my own? It’s bumpy work but absolutely worth it.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Jennifer Walters Holistic Psychotherapy – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
I’m a psychotherapist, licensed as a marriage and family therapist. I’m in private practice in Highland Park on the East side of Los Angeles. I work in a psychoanalytic and depth psychology style. This means that I believe we all have parts of us that are unconscious. Our unconscious is formed through early experiences. These early experiences shape us and from them we unconsciously decide which parts of ourselves are acceptable and which parts aren’t acceptable. My approach is to welcome all the parts, even the ones we want to kill off and get rid of, so that we can know and think about them together. When we integrate all of these parts of ourselves life starts to feel much better. I’ve seen it happen over and over again with people and it’s why I do this work.
I’m known for being able to clearly see what is happening unconsciously and naming it in a compassionate but direct way. While I do a lot of listening, I’m a very engaged and active therapist, not someone who just sits and nods and I think this sets me apart. I’ve noticed that the clients who are meant to find me, do. They are seeking warmth and directness, and we also laugh a lot together. I’m known for seeing through to the heart of the matter, articulating it and trusting that whatever shows up, it’s there for us to know about so that we can get things feeling better. It’s all ok and welcome.
I’m most proud of the courage I see in my clients. It inspires me. I’m proud to hold space for it and for them. It’s truly the coolest thing, this work we do together, and I’m really proud of it. We live in a world that is so split, so convinced that life is about winning or losing, good vs. bad, all or nothing. It’s such a painful, painful way to experience life. When people begin to understand their own complexity and hold it with compassion, they are able to hold others with the same compassion. This is how we connect to our humanity, by first recognizing it in ourselves. Witnessing this process with clients is so rewarding, so heart-warming. I believe it is a powerful way of changing the world and I’m proud to be a proponent and collaborator in that change as a therapist.
PS I’ve also returned to making art. It’s been so exciting to make things again from a place of curiosity and play. It’s like a being a kid again. I work with a lot of creative people and love witnessing their creativity grow as they heal and feel whole.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I truly love Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a place where people just get on with being themselves and doing what they want to do. I don’t see a lot of people waiting around for permission. I think it has something to do with the energy of the West, of exploration, freedom, experiment, big sky, the ocean.
I don’t know how I went so long without sunshine having spent years in Oregon and Chicago. The vitamin D is a real boost. Access to such beautiful areas – oceans, mountains, desert – it feels like a gift.
There’s a tension here between light and shadow. There are a lot of gifted healers here and a lot of people genuinely working toward wholeness and health. And there are a lot of not so great healers and people doing spiritual bypass, focused on the outside looking just so but neglecting the truth of what’s inside. But I know that tension is an important part of life, we need the shadow to see the light, so I’m happy to live among both parts.
What I like least is what is happening regarding cost of living, so many people not able to have access to affordable housing, the homeless population growing and not receiving the assistance they need. Los Angeles used to feel like a more affordable metropolis, more accessible, and it’s very disheartening to see that change as it shifts to feeling more exclusive, inaccessible, a place for the privileged. I want to find ways to change this and I hope as a city we can.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.highlandparktherapy.com/
- Phone: 323.509.4638
Image Credit:
Portrait of Jenny Walters in front of orange wall by Diana Rothery
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