With 15 years of experience in private practice, Julie Hughes is a dedicated counsellor specializing in relationship and individual counselling. She is warm and approachable, creating a safe and inviting space where clients immediately feel at ease. She combines a gentle but directive method, which has helped many couples and individuals process their feelings and be with their experience while finding more ease and capacity in their lives and relationships. With a blend of confidence and intuition, She is adept at addressing and resolving a wide array of life and relationship issues. She is equipped to support you through life’s challenges and transitions.
Your time with Julie will help you feel more resourceful, empowered, and better equipped to deal with life’s challenges. The hope is that you experience more resilience, capacity, and skill in handling life’s stresses and find more meaning, depth, and secure attachment in all your relationships. Through our work together, you will experience an increase in life force energy and vitality, and build the nervous system capacity to effectively handle stress and resolve trauma.
Julie Hughes Education and Approach
As a counsellor she draws from a variety of modalities tailored to meet the unique needs of each client. Recently, she completed a three-year training program in Somatic Experiencing and obtained a Certificate in Somatic Experiencing®, a body-oriented, nervous system approach to healing trauma and other stress related challenges.
Trained as a trauma-informed somatic experiencing practitioner and expertise in attachment-based practices, family systems, and Stephen Jenkinson’s profound work on grief, aging, and the reclamation of culture and community,
For the past 15 years, she has deeply immersed herself in the study of Family Systems Theory, which moves beyond the modern concept of hyper-individualism to a more relational model of being. Through the lens of systems theory, we understand ourselves as intricately linked to and shaped by our family of origin, early life experiences, and culture. We learn primarily from our environment and the people closest to us, extending even to the generations before us. Drawing on these insights, she explores the history of losses, relationship dynamics, and the trauma that may have been passed down inter-generationally.
This relational perspective can offer you the opportunity to transform your perceptions and behaviours by breaking down old patterns that may have kept you isolated. Instead, it empowers you to make different choices during personal struggles or crises, often involving actions contrary to your instinctual, fear-based responses. With increased awareness and a willingness to engage in personal healing work, everyone is capable of developing healthy, functional, and loving relationships.