We recently had the chance to connect with Jessie Santiago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jessie, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What do you think is misunderstood about your business?
Almost everything. And I don’t say that with bitterness. I just know my work doesn’t fit into a neat category.
What I do is hard to explain because most people haven’t seen anything like it before. Like most niche things, it can seem strange to some and deeply resonant to others. Some think I do hair with a spiritual twist. Others assume I left beauty behind and only do clinical hypnosis now. Neither is true.
What I actually do is help people shift what’s underneath in the subconscious. The old patterns. The subconscious programs. The beliefs that shape how they move through the world. I use hypnosis, energy work, creative process, and reflection. I work as an alternative mental health professional. That’s not a common title, but it’s the most accurate one I’ve found.
This work didn’t exist in the way I needed/wanted it to. So I built it. And rebranding was rough. Not because I lacked clarity, but because I knew people would get confused or want to hold me in the light that felt comfortable to them. And they did. Some walked away. Some made assumptions. Some decided I was too much. But being misunderstood showed me exactly who I was still trying to perform for. Letting go of that changed everything.
Now, I don’t walk into rooms as a fraction of myself. I bring all of it. My queerness. My culture. My womanhood. My spirituality. My years behind the chair. If it doesn’t fit someone’s frame of reference, that’s okay. I’m not here to prove anything. I’m here to do the work I was meant to do.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Jessie Santiago, also known as The Subliminal Stylist. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist, a licensed cosmetologist, a Reiki Master Educator, and a healing artist. I’ve spent more than 20 years behind the chair as a hairstylist and educator, and I’ve also worked as a professional muralist and abstract artist. My background lives at the intersection of beauty, creative expression, energy work, and subconscious healing.
In the past few years, I became a certified hypnotherapist to bring more depth and structure to work I had already been doing for years. My practice blends hypnosis, energy work, ritual, and beauty in a way that feels personal, cultural, and deeply intuitive. I bring back flavors of Indigenous healing that focus on relationship, listening, and honoring what can’t always be named or seen. Everything I do is grounded in identity, consent, and personal truth. I work with people who are ready to shift. Folks who are unlearning what was never theirs, reconnecting to their bodies, and making choices that feel like home. Sometimes that begins with hair. Sometimes it begins in the subconscious. But it always moves toward the same thing. Wholeness. Honesty. Self-trust. I’ve woven all of my skills into one practice, not to be everything, but to meet people where they are. My work is about holding space for healing, especially in communities that are often overlooked or misrepresented. This is personal. This is collective. This is mine.
Right now, I’m focused on private hypnotherapy sessions, teaching and creating a body of work that reflects all of who I am. I’m not here to shrink myself to fit someone else’s idea of what healing should look like. I’m here to make space for people who are ready to stop performing too.
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
I used to believe that being good would keep me safe. That if I could just get my tone, my timing, my face, my body right, I could avoid punishment, embarrassment, abandonment, or being misunderstood. I also believed I wasn’t smart. School didn’t come easily to me. I struggled. I couldn’t still. I talked too much, laughed too loud, forgot things, acted out. And because I didn’t fit into the system, I assumed something was wrong with me. I didn’t have the language for neurodivergence or learning differences. I just thought I was bad at being a person.
What I know now is that being good doesn’t protect you. And being smart is way more than academics. Gold stars are BS, and I don’t need one to be worthy of good things. I was smart the whole time. I was paying attention the whole time. My body knew what was unsafe, even when my brain couldn’t explain it. The talking was intelligence. The resistance was intelligence. The daydreaming and the mess were too.
Now I care less about being good and more about being whole. I care more about naming what’s true than performing what’s acceptable. That shift changed everything. How I work. How I teach. How I speak. How I show up in relationships. And I’m still practicing it every day.
What’s something you changed your mind about after failing hard?
For a long time I thought success meant doing what everyone said was the “right path”. Own a salon. Build it out and scale it. That was my version of the American dream. I believed if I worked hard, treated people fairly, and gave it my all, the world would meet me halfway. But it didn’t. What actually happened is I ended up exhausted, burned out, and questioning myself. I failed in the sense that I tried to build something that didn’t fully match who I was. I thought the world was fair place. I thought effort and honesty would be enough to thrive. It wasn’t. And the truth is, I failed myself by trying to fit into a system that never really had space for me or most women of color.
The gift in that failure is that it forced me to do business differently. Now I don’t think about growth in the traditional sense. I let my work be creative and alive. Some days it looks like art, some days it’s healing, and sometimes it’s just me figuring out what makes sense for the life I actually want to live. Failing at the American dream freed me from chasing it. And in that space, I built something that feels real.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What do you believe is true but cannot prove?
I believe every decision is made in the energy of either love or fear.
Fear pulls us in and makes us small. It convinces us to trade honesty for approval, to shrink parts of ourselves just to feel safe. Fear feels logical in the moment, but most of the time it’s just survival running the show. Love moves in the opposite direction. Love expands. It’s brave. It doesn’t promise safety, but it does promise a life that feels worth living. To choose love is to risk being seen. To risk rejection. To risk loss. But it’s also the only way we grow. When I look back, the choices I made in fear kept me stuck and anxious. The choices I made in love scared me, but they’re the ones that made me whole and allowed me to live authentically. I can’t prove this, but I know it in my body. Underneath all the details, it always comes down to the same question. Am I choosing love, or am I choosing fear?
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. Have you ever gotten what you wanted, and found it did not satisfy you?
Yes. I once got exactly what I thought I wanted, an opportunity to teach at a school I admired. On paper, it looked like the perfect fit. I believed in their mission, their words, their image. But when I got closer, I realized they didn’t have the ethical backbone I thought they did. It was crushing. That disappointment showed me how alive and well capitalism really is. Organizations, institutions, and individuals can say almost anything to get us to spend our money or our energy there. They can wrap it up in language that sounds like care, equity, or justice, but when you scratch the surface, sometimes it’s not always what it seems. In this situation, that was the case.
I learned to be more careful. To listen to my intuition, even the tiny clues can help. And remember, we are all human. Even the most intuitive of us can fall into hyper-suggestibility when we want something to be true. That experience reminded me that discernment is not about never being fooled. It is about noticing when something feels off. Being willing to walk away to protect your own integrity means you haven’t betrayed yourself. Be proud of your growth.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thesubliminalstylist.com
- Instagram: the.subliminalstylist
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessie-santiago-17295b267
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Thesubliminalstylist
Image Credits
Amber Houlgin
