Spotlight Series

Guest Name: Jessica Thompson

Licensed therapist, Doula

All right, welcome Jessica. Thanks so much for being on our spotlight series of the Best in Utah for Pelvic Health. And I’m excited to chat with you today and go over all these fun questions that we have. But before we start, I’m gonna read a short bio for our audience here.

So Jessica Thompson is a licensed therapist and doula with a passion for supporting mothers through the emotional landscape of pregnancy, postpartum and beyond.

She specializes in peri… natal mental health, helping women navigate motherhood and anxiety, birth trauma, grief, and the weight of perfectionism. Whether preparing for pregnancy or healing from past experiences, she strives to create a space where mothers feel seen, supported, and empowered.  Thank you so much, Jessica, for being on.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Absolutely.

Okay, I’m excited to jump in to all these questions. So tell us what made you decide to be a mental health therapist? Like walk us through your journey there.

Oh, do you want the short, medium or long version?

Well, we have about 20-ish minutes, so.

We’ll give you the short slash medium.

So I grew up in foster care and I was adopted. And so I kind of always had social workers in my background. I was so young, I don’t remember, but being told, you know, this is kind of how I was brought to my amazing family. And then I went through some hardships as we all do throughout childhood and stuff in teenage years and being a teenager is hard in general.

And I started going to counseling and my therapist, her name, I remember her name so clearly just her name was Trinity and she was the coolest therapist ever. And I was six, 15 or 16. And I never knew what therapy was like, you know, You just, I guess back then it was taboo. Like if you go to therapy, then something’s wrong with you. Nothing was wrong with me.

I was just an anxious teenager. So I saw her and she helped me with a lot of things. And she just, I remember always made like a really big impact on my heart because she helped me so much through really some hard things when I was a teen. And then I always remember being pulled to psychology, really wanting to understand why we do what we do and why people do really bad things.

That was kind of what I was interested in as a teenager. And in my senior year of high school, I had a really cool psychology teacher. And then I talked to her about being a psychologist and all that. And I eventually wanted to become a psychiatrist. And then when I got to college, I decided I absolutely do not want to go to like med school. Like that is, I don’t want to be in school until I’m 40.

I mean, it’s really not that long, but it wouldn’t feel that long. And then I came back from serving an LDS mission. And I talked to one of my neighbors and she was a social worker. And I really loved what I experienced on my mission, really meeting a lot of different people, talking with them, supporting them, a lot of emotional support as well. And then my neighbor kind of just sat with me and was a guide. And she’s like, what do you want to do? And I was telling her all my interests. And she says, you should be a social worker. And that just felt really right.

So that’s what I did. I applied for my BSW, applied for my MSW and everything just kind of fell like, you know, exactly how it should. And that’s my story of where, like why I became a therapist, but my specialty, that’s a whole different story.

I mean, you’re happy to share that or entwine that in as we go to of like, what do you feel like makes you different maybe like through this specialty and who’s an ideal fit for you?

Oh yeah. Oh, that’s a good question. Oh, well, what I’ve realized is you can’t be a therapist for everybody. And I realized I don’t want to be a therapist for everybody and that’s okay. I love to give people permission, even myself, like it’s okay to therapist hop.

I’ve been working with my personal therapist for seven years and it took me, I think three previous therapists before I found her. So that’s totally okay. And let’s see, where do I start with this?

So with my specialty is perinatal mental health and I work mainly with mothers and when I’m mothers in the range of first time moms to mothers who are in their fifties and they have adult children. So it’s really a broad range. And what brought me to working with mothers is I was working at a previous clinic who specialized in perinatal mental health. And I didn’t realize I would love it so much because going to that clinic, I wanted to specialize in sex therapy and couples.

But when I got there, I was like, okay, couples aren’t for me, but I love the sex therapy piece. And then I was really drawn to the motherhood piece, mainly because I was a first time mom when I started working there.

My daughter, my oldest daughter was about a year, year and a half when I started working there. And I… I really struggled with my postpartum with my first daughter and I didn’t have words to what I was struggling with until I was working at this clinic and it was almost like a some light healed pieces of my heart that felt shattered from my postpartum experience and I realized oh wow like I struggled with postpartum anxiety and depression and I didn’t have any help.

I didn’t know I needed help So I took all the trainings and I read all the books I could, all the podcasts. I just really dove into how to help moms around having their first child and getting to know their new self again after having even your first or seventh baby.

It’s just all a journey. So that’s really what drew me towards that. And what makes me different is… Well, now I’m a doula. So I have this really cool different side to my perinatal mental health journey where I get to see women in these different spotlights.

And I just, it’s such a beautiful, sacred piece that I get to be involved in. And I So there’s a lot of different parental therapists, but we all have our own different specialties. So I would say my specialty is really working with mothers who are in the thick of motherhood, whether you’re a first time mom or in your 50s and getting to work through like any anxiety they’re experiencing or they feel like they lost themselves in motherhood and they want to find themselves again.

A lot of moms I work with are struggling with perfectionism and I love supporting with that. and then birth trauma so i’m an emdr therapist as well and i love helping moms through birth trauma using emdr and expressive arts which is like writing or getting your hands on clay or drawing things like that.

amazing amazing okay um who would you kind of hit who the ideal fit is those people um what does the process look like to work with you.

Oh yeah. Typically people will email me or text me or call and say, “Hey, can we set up a consult?” So I do a 15 to 20 minute phone consult and I just get to know them a little bit and ask them what they’re seeking for in regards to support.

And then I’ll tell them my approach to therapy and maybe some ideas of how we could support them. And I’ll ask them like, “How do you feel this conversation is going? How do you feel about working with me?” And if they feel like they want to move forward, then we’ll schedule an appointment. And then I will do an assessment with them either online, on video or in person. And then they can decide. I give them my feedback on frequency.

So if someone’s in higher distress, then maybe weekly is going to be best for them until they can come down from their distress.

But typically everyone, I would not everyone, I would say 90% of individuals I work with meet me every other week. And then we just kind of, I have an approach where it’s very client led, where you bring what you want to work on to therapy, and I’m going to provide you with the best tools I can support you in where you’re at.

And I hear a lot of horror stories actually about therapists, which really saddens me. I will never tell a client what to do.

I’ll never tell them what they’re doing. Like they need to be doing something else. And obviously if they’re in any harm, I’m going to support them. But in regards to like mothering, you know, that’s just not my place.

And I’ve heard horror stories of therapists telling, oh yeah, you know, it’s just because you’re a mom, da, da, da, da, da. so harmful so i always disclaim to my clients i will never tell you what to do i’ll never tell you how to live your life i’m here as i kind of give this analogy where you we’re in a car together and you’re driving

and i’m the passenger and the scenery is your emotional mental spiritual physical landscape like i’m your passenger i’m not in charge like you’re guiding me through this journey with you and i’m just supporting you as a safe safe space so awesome cool And then.

what in your lens, in your work, would you say recovery looks like, whether it’s that transition from not mother to mother or that postpartum transition or recovery from needing your services? You can touch on whatever lens really speaks to you. And what does recovery mean to you and your clinical ethos?

Yeah, it’s a really good question.

I like to say upfront, I am not a short term clinic. I’m a long term clinic. And what I mean by that is I, there are some clinics out there who like, okay, six to eight sessions, like that’s all I’m going to provide. And you’re, you’re good. But I’m more like, this is very tailored to your own individual needs and what you’ve been through.

So if someone has a significant trauma history, that is so harmful to say, okay, you have six to eight sessions and then you’re gone. That’s not okay, my opinion. That’s not what I would do.

There are some clinics who would, and maybe that’s helpful for them. I don’t know. but i’ll tell clients they’ll ask me like what is you know when when will i be done and i’ll say like that’s typically up to you like if a client feels like they’re doing well like okay.

let’s graduate or maybe move to once a month for a while and then see but typically when someone comes into my office let’s say they’re struggling with a motherhood a piece of motherhood and we’ll be working on that then they’ll resolve that in a way And then typically something else comes up because we’re complex human beings.

So maybe something in their past from their childhood, maybe something traumatic had come up. So we’ll work through that. And then maybe something in like their partnership or marriage has come up and like sexual sexuality is becoming troublesome within motherhood.

So like, you know what I’m saying? It’s all intersex together and it just really depends on the person. So I don’t know. I feel like with your clinic, recovery makes sense because you’re physically having them recover right from birth or some maybe some trauma or accident. But here in my clinic, I don’t know. I don’t use the word recovery.

Yeah, I’m going. It’s more like let’s, a healing journey for me is like a lifelong experience and you’re going to go through waves. And so I just like to tell people like, it just depends on how you’re feeling. And if you feel good, then great. I trust that. And if that means you’ve been working with me for three months or three years, it’s totally up to you. But I’ve been working with some individuals for about five, six years, and we’re still working on stuff. And they meet like two, one to two times a month.

And yeah, I just think life keeps coming up. Like I’m not having a baby every six months, you know, like I would definitely need a lot more recovery from you, but life keeps happening mentally, emotionally. So I just think it’s always ongoing, but that doesn’t mean someone needs to be in therapy for the rest of their lives unless they want to be. Right. Yep.

And we, I would, I would say we, we cross both lines in ours, right? We have like, we’ll graduate someone when they’ve like completed their piece, but like they often come back for like a tune-up session or like, Hey, I have this new thing that popped up and then do a couple sessions or they have another baby. And so you carry your pelvis with you your whole life, your physical, you’re active and you’re doing things. It’s the same. Your mental health is changing. Your physical is changing. Your spiritual is changing.

So it’s good to have a pulse on all of those things all the time and never really like, you never really fully recover, right? You like a like work on things and get into a good place a maintenance phase maybe um but yeah fascinating to talk about that stuff i know.

i always love to highlight too like we’re not perfect beings and imperfection if we allow it to flow can like make life a little bit not smoother but easier to adjust with and kind of thing with therapy like some some months or years you might need a lot more help and sometimes you don’t so it’s just a different seasons of life that we’re all in Yep, totally.

Okay, next question. What is something that most people don’t know that you think that they should know about your services?

Oh, this is a good question. I wish you would have prepped me on these. Can you repeat it one more time so I can answer it?

What’s something that most people don’t know that you think that they should know about your services?

Oh, my goodness. Hmm. something that they don’t know that they should know yep that you think that they should know or a common myth or something okay i have it i mean i i’m gonna say this in the most gentle kindest reassuring way I am not, I’m Mary Poppins. I am not a fairy godmother and I’m not a magician.

I actually have a magic wand in my office that I’ll tell clients. They’re all, you know, probably one of the most common sayings that occur in my office is, can you please fix me? And I’ll pull up my wand and say, you know what? If this actually worked, I would 100% without even like zero doubt, wave it and like make everything work. you know, that was troublesome, go away for you. Like, I really care about you and I want this to go away for you, but I’m not magic.

I don’t have all the answers and I’m not here to fix you. I’m here to support you.

And I think a lot of people approach therapy as something’s wrong with me, please fix me. But that is not my role as a therapist. And I think that assures a lot of people I work with because they it’s like validating like oh i’m not broken and i just read this quote by ernest hemingway that he says we’re all a little broken that’s how the light gets in i really love that so i just i don’t believe that we’re shattered humans but there’s pieces of us that are broken but it’s not my job to patch them for you like i assist.

you with the tools to help you do it because that’s a lot more empowering than having someone do it for you Probably awesome.

okay um do you have anything special that you want to promote to the audience at all. This is scary, but yes okay so aside from my mental health services so i’ve been a mental health therapist for.

Oh my gosh, I don’t know, seven, eight years. So we’re along those lines. And I love what I do. And I’ve just been wanting to expand my services a little bit more in Utah and kind of worldwide. So I’m really putting myself out there.

So I’m gonna start to, I’m gonna begin birth consulting. So what that looks like is now that I’m a doula, I’m going to add some services where I’m a doula, but I’m not actively taking a lot of clients. Like I have two births this year.

I’m also five months postpartum. So I really want to take care of myself and my body and get the sleep as my body is still recovering. So I’m taking births really thoughtfully, mindfully. But along with my doula services, I’m going to be adding birth consulting, which is going to look like, you know, someone I’ve had a lot of family actually reach out saying like, I really want a peaceful birth, like help me get that.

And so, well, they’ll say like, they’ll ask me questions. Like, how did you have a peaceful birth? Cause I’ve had two home births and I’ve absolutely loved them. And they,

Um, We’ll just have a million questions. And honestly, it takes a lot of time and I love answering it and all those questions. I’m so passionate about it.

So something I’m going to add is, you know, having consultations to give them resources to help them work through maybe some fears or help them expand their knowledge and help them connect to different providers in. utah or you know other states but

I’m just really looking forward to connecting to more women and families to help them build their ideal birth a training i gave last year was was called building an intuitive approach to birth and that’s basically what i’m going to do is just help them build connect to their intuition build their ideal birth and help them build an empowering postpartum experience

amazing nice job nice work thank you what excited that was amazing okay what is the main thing that you want to be known for as a professional sure you can do both if you want human I want to be known for embodying joy and motherhood.

I really love motherhood so much while also acknowledging there’s days that it sucks and it’s hard and I just want to run away, but we can feel all those things and joy at the same time. Like they can coexist. So I just want to be known as the therapist and doula who witnesses you and your motherhood journey and embodies motherhood with you.

Amazing. Great. Awesome. Where can we find you? How can we find you? All the things.

Yes. So I’m on Instagram as very original, Jessica, the therapist. I might need to change my handle as I’m adding more services. And then you can find me on my website as well. It’s www.intuitivelywelltherapy.com. That has a list of services for my therapy services.

And then anyone who connects on Instagram, if they want to call or text, my phone number is on there. Anyone can shoot me a text or call me on my work phone if they have any questions. Awesome. Email as well.

Thank you, Jessica, for coming on. It’s been a pleasure as always to chat with you.

And thank you so much. Thank you. I’ve loved this.