I see you.
Life can be overwhelming, therapy can help. But traditional therapy doesn’t work for everyone.
If you’ve found yourself struggling to solve the issues you’ve been facing, maybe it’s time to try something new, such as Art Therapy. EMDR, or Ketamine-Assisted Therapy. Alternatives to talk therapy can help people calm their nervous system, heal from the effects of trauma, alleviate symptoms of chronic illness, reduce anxiety triggers, and live more meaningful lives.
Unconventional therapy for unconventional people
Jess Minckley (they/them) is an artist, art therapist and mental health counselor, entrepreneur, and educator. They are a lifelong learner with experience working with people with a variety of complex psychological issues. Read on to find out more.
Learn more about Jess here
Imagine a safe space to heal.
Jess is a member of the +++LGBTQIA2S+++ community. They are gender-affirming & sex-positive. They are allied with people who hold marginalized identities, including sexual identity: those in the kink community and those who practice consensual non-monogamy (CNM).
They are body-positive, which extends far beyond health at every size (HAES) and into stigmatized shapes, disability, disfiguration, and body differences. They aspire to be antiracist and anti-oppression by employing a Liberation Psychology framework, which means they actively engage in dismantling systems of oppression, including in the therapeutic arena. The Feminist approach means more egalitarian relationshipping than you may be accustomed to in therapy.
Affirming of
Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color
transgender, non-binary, intersex, and otherwise gender diverse individuals
the neurodivergent & people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
members of the d/Disability community
people living with chronic illness and/or pain
those who experience altered states of consciousness
individuals who struggle with addictions
Therapeutic Services We Offer
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Mental Health Counseling & Art Therapy
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Mentorship & Creative Coaching
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Professionally-Facilitated Peer Support Groups
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Psychoeducation & Organization Consultation
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Psychedelic Journeying & Integration
Art Therapy
I am an ATR : Registered Art Therapist
The Registered Art Therapist (ATR) is the credential that ensures an art therapist meets established standards, with successful completion of advanced specific graduate-level education in art therapy and supervised post-graduate art therapy experience.
My ATR credential number is: # 22-455 which you can verify on the website of the Art Therapy Credentials Board
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is awesome! In practical terms, it’s using creative modes of processing and expression to promote healing alongside regular talk therapy. The Creative Arts Therapies (CAT) include writing, music, dance, drama, and more.
Art therapy clients may use traditional tools, such as paint, pastels, colored pencils, various kinds of sculpture, ceramics, or things like photography, collage, making comics, video, or digital art. These healing methods can be combined with movement, visualization, meditation, and/or community interventions ranging from magic to performance.
Art therapists work in many kinds of places, from community mental health clinics to private practice settings, hospitals, veteran’s organizations, schools, forensic settings, group homes and senior centers, colleges, and also less traditional settings such as art museums and international humanitarian aid trips.
A variety of mental & physical health conditions can be treated using art therapy. It’s not just for kids, (although children and adolescents benefit much because they don’t always know how to articulate their feelings, or they do so through dramatic play).
Art therapy as a discipline is a nationally regulated mental health profession. The American Art Therapy Association (AATA) sets ethical standards. The Art Therapy Credential Board (ATCB) gives credentials. Art therapists are artists who have master’s level training in counseling or family therapy in addition to art-based therapy methods and techniques. Their credentials can be Provisional (ATR-P), Registered Art Therapist (ATR), and can include Board Certification (ATR-BC). Do not endeavor to do art therapy with anyone who does not have these letters after their name as they may not be trained at all in art therapy!
Jess Minckley is a provisional art therapist (ATR-P), approved by the credentials board in 2022, license # 22-455. You can double check that on their website HERE.
In art therapy, your brain’s two hemispheres have a new opportunity to connect in a healing way– nonverbally. Fascinating research is now available, which describes the neurological parallel processes and the integration of the “creative mind” (the right hemisphere) and the “logical mind” (the left hemisphere). Bilateral drawing has similar efficacy as, and can be combined with, eye movement reprocessing and desensitization (EMDR).
Creative processes can “unlock” buried content without re-traumatizing clients by asking them to verbally recount painful memories. If you have tried talk therapy and it didn’t help, or if you tried a modality like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and left still feeling like there was deeper work to do, this may be why.
I provide Art Therapy in these states:
Washington
California
Georgia
I provide Mental Health Counseling in these states:
Utah
Associate Clinical Mental Health Counselor (ACMHC)
License # 13269676-6009
Washington
Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC)
License # LH61457229
Soon, an interstate compact will make it possible for licensed counselors to see clients in even more states.
To find out more, visit the Counseling Compact site
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy
I offer a therapeutic modality called Ketamine-Assisted Art Psychotherapy (KAP)
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) is a holistic modality in which ketamine is used as a complement to psychotherapy to help eligible patients experience more frequent breakthroughs and sustained improvement in symptoms. I take on the psychotherapy portion of the experience, while an outside medical team supports you on all medication aspects. This includes determining eligibility, developing a custom treatment plan, prescribing the medicine and monitoring outcomes. Below is more information about KAP to help you navigate if it may be a good fit for you.
Just a few of the issues we work with people on:
Gender Exploration, Sexual Identity, + Relationship Structure
Are you, your child, or teen exploring your position on pronouns? Are you looking for help understanding your queer kid?
Are you in the process of coming out but worried what’s going to happen? Are you transgender but still have some question marks regarding affirming care? Are you questioning what you want your sexuality to mean to you at this stage in your life?
Are you and your partner interested in finding out more about what your options are in terms of relationship structures? These are terrific things to discover in therapy!
Parent Guilt
There’s a sense of shame that parents feel over what they’re not doing. It’s the hardest job in the world, which no one does “perfectly”, yet the ubiquitous they are constantly commenting on what you do. You might have a really conflicted relationship to parenthood.
Typically the Mother Wound affects people assigned [and socialized] female (AFABs) in a deep way. Parenting is fraught and complicated, and sometimes deeply painful to people who are struggling to raise kids in a new way. Especially if their parents are still in the picture. Old patterns get triggered and suddenly you find yourself saying something your own mother would say and you cringe. There are compassionate ways to meet this situation, I’d love to work with you on recovering from the shame that keeps you feeling bad.
Antiracism for White Folks
Are you a white person with lots of questions about what to do about systemic injustice and institutionalized racism but are too afraid to ask? Have you tried asking a person of color and been told to “do your own work” but you don’t know what that entails? Therapy is a safe place to talk about all of the things that you don’t understand. Here you can begin to undo social conditioning, uncover and overcome guilt & shame, learn about racism and why oppression still exists, critical terminology, and wake up to your part in it.
Sleep Problems
I love talking about sleep. Got insomnia? Let’s trouble shoot it! I’ve got a very long checklist of things to talk about to help get to sleep, stay asleep, and get more restful sleep. It is key to optimal organ function and mental clarity. Sleep impacts our mental and physical health dramatically. It’s related to a lot of other issues, including personality and genetics!
I also work in concert with holistic, natural, and functional medicine and have referrals to psychiatric medication providers who can help you get to sleep, stay asleep, sleep deeper, and without night terrors or nightmares.
Meeting the essential goal of getting good sleep can help you skyrocket forward in other work you’re doing in therapy. A rested nervous system has a better chance of being regulated.
Financial Counseling
Are you stumped about how to take the wheel of your life when it comes to making a real budget and then sticking to it?
Do you have familial “baggage” around planning, saving, and/or retirement? Do you need coaching about asking for adequate compensation in your job? Would you like to change jobs but don’t really know what your options are? Therapists help people with these topics and I have years of experience helping people get out of debt even when they’re not making much money. It is totally possible!
Spirituality & Religious Trauma
Many people have (or have left behind) belief systems & cultures that are oppressive to them. Exploring your unique cosmology in therapy is fascinating. For example, everyone would answer the question “why do bad things happen to good people?” differently. In fact, how would you answer this question? Even spouses or siblings have different beliefs about any given topic: money, politics, marriage. This relates to their choices in coping tools, their unique responses and troubling issues, and their general sense of ease and wellbeing in the world. If you have experienced trauma related to religion, it can feel alienating and destabilizing. There is a solution to religious/spiritual trauma. It begins in a safe relationship, such as the therapeutic one. Evicting religious guilt and shame from the body is possible through somatic trauma work.
Chronic Illness
I specialize in working with people with acquired chronic conditions. Often they discount that they even have a chronic illness such as PCOS, hyperthyroidism, GERD, arthritis, migraines, or TMJ.
I also have experience working with people with Lyme’s, Crohn’s, Ehrler-Danlo, POTS, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, RA, CSF leak, TBI, and aging-related cognitive decline.
There are unique challenges that come with the changes our body makes for us, sometimes in response to trauma. Medical trauma from procedures or not being believed by doctors can complicate our symptoms. We can feel left out of life or that our body has betrayed us.
There is a direct correlation to our mental wellbeing and physical health! Therapy has been shown to reduce symptoms of medical illnesses including asthma, cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease- wow! What are you waiting for? Let’s get you some relief!
Grief
We don’t grieve if we didn’t love. Loss hurts, and it has its own agenda and timeline. This can lead to frustration and sometimes the people in our lives just don’t get it. Grief affects all people, but very few people know how to be there for someone who is grieving. Traumatic loss such as death during the pandemic can cut to our very core. It makes us question our own mortality and the meaning of existence. Why is there so much pain? Will it ever go away? In therapy people talk and move and draw and cry it out of their body. If even that thought feels repulsive, it’s okay. We can start somewhere else.
Life Transitions
Breakups, marriages, job changes, moving, major outside stressors: these are all huge upheavals that may require additional support, time, patience, and understanding.
Other transitions in life include aging-related changes (like hair loss or sexual dysfunction), having babies, watching your kids turning into tweens, and also major epiphanies. These situations can rock your world. These are topics people often bring to therapy & coaching sessions. We can bring curiosity and ease to these very normal transitions. We can help ritualize the passing into new phases with sanctity and reverence instead of panic and despair.
And so much more!
Book a 20-minute Consultation Call
(206) 316-8507
Consult calls are $25
Read more about what to ask in these calls
by TherapyJeff from TikTok
No surprises.
New federal laws help protect people from surprise medical bills with a Good Faith Estimate.
These are our rates:
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$200 per 50-minute session
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$250
You may pursue reimbursement for this type of therapy!
It depends on your insurance whether they will pay for couples and family work.
Testimonials
“You were so thoughtful about working around my unusual obstacles and I really appreciate that. As a result, I am now a little braver than I was at the start, and that is kind of a huge big deal.”
— Group attendee
"Great group as always. I enjoyed the conversation and art exercise today. I like when there's some direction and it's something new like this breathing doodle. Jess is so validating and chronic illness-informed, which I very much appreciate. She holds space for everyone while giving gentle feedback or redirection if needed."
- Creativity and Chronic Illness Support Group Attendee