Jay Hails

M.Ed. , CCC

Call: 604-834-4367 Email office of Jay Hails

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Primary location:

Jay Hails 400 - 601 West Broadway Vancouver, V5Z 4C2

Office is wheelchair accessible

Proximity to Transit and or Intersections:

W Broadway and Ash—a block from Broadway-City Hall SkyTrain Station.

Other (nearby) Locations Served:

Mount Pleasant, Shaugnessy, Cambie, Strathcona, False Creek, Kitsilano, Yaletown, Oakridge, East Van, Burnaby, Richmond.

See in Google Maps

Areas of practice

Adolescent Issues
Anxiety and/or Panic
Autism and Developmental Disorders
Bullying - School
Caregiver Support
Child Behaviour
Child Development
Child Stress and Trauma
Depression
Divorce and/or Separation
Family Issues
First Nations Issues
Men's Issues
Parent/Teen Conflict
Parenting Issues
School/Work Adjustment
Stress Management
Teen Adjustment Issues

Approaches used

ADD and ADHD Coping Strategies
Child Centred Therapy
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Critical Incident Stress Management
Developmental
Humanistic Therapy
Online / Virtual / Telehealth Counselling
Play Therapy
School Psychology
Solution Focused Therapy
Telephone Counselling

Counselling practice website:

https://www.jayhails.com

Practice information:

My strength lies in helping you identify and celebrate your own unique strengths. The fact that you're looking here for help already tells me you're strong.

If you’re overwhelmed or stuck, or you’ve lost something precious, I can help. If your feelings are too intense, or you don’t even know what you’re feeling anymore, I can walk you through that fog. I counsel adults, teens, and children. I offer my clients empathy, respect, curiosity, appreciation, and honesty.

I also offer my clients agency and control. I'm a professional and I'm providing the therapy, but you're the expert on you. It's your therapy, and you're the one in charge.

If your child is struggling with feelings, behaviour, or learning, I can help with all of those. I have specific training, instincts, and talents in making connections, assessing strengths, solving problems, and celebrating breakthroughs with children and their caregivers. I spent years working as a special education teacher and school counsellor. Schools are complex systems, but I know how to help children and families navigate them.

I'm a Masters level Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC) with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA), and I've worked with people of all ages and diverse backgrounds, in school, corporate, and private practice settings.

I have expertise in helping people with these concerns:

anxiety, worries, & managing stress
celebrating 2SLGBTQ+ identities
suicide prevention
trauma response & recovery
life changes
setting boundaries
relationship breakdown
processing guilt
loss of a pet
infidelity
grief & loss

Here are some of the child and youth issues where I've had success:

childhood anxiety
friendship skills
self-esteem
child cognitive development
school refusal
adolescent emotional needs
challenging behaviours
self-harm
parenting problems
school situations
family conflict
worries
making friends
coping with separation or divorce
selective mutism
questioning gender identities, roles, and orientations

I'll try to avoid jargon here, and I won't use any pretentious acronyms. But some people want to know things like this. My work is informed by a few different models, including these:

Gordon Neufeld's attachment-based, developmental approach
Carl Rogers' client-centred therapy
Gabor Maté's work on trauma
positive psychology
cognitive behaviour therapy
harm reduction
trauma-informed work
narrative therapy
culturally responsive counselling

Free consultation:

I'm happy to spend a few minutes talking "off the clock" so you can decide if I'm a good fit. It's generally agreed that the therapeutic relationship is the number one predictor of therapy's success.
We can talk in person, in my cozy fourth-floor office on West Broadway; or virtually—on Google Meet, FaceTime, telephone—from any place you feel comfortable.

Some things I know are true:

Emotions aren't problems, they're valuable information. They tell us what's going on with ourselves. We need to pay attention, feel them, and express them.
When you're making a change, baby steps are your best bet. Set a goal that's easy to reach, and use that easy win to set the next goal.
Direction, not perfection. Mistakes are better than paralysis.
I can't expect to get trust from someone until I give trust to them first.
Also, chances are I won't get respect from someone until I give respect to them first.
"The truth about stories is that that's all we are." (Thomas King)
Sometimes all a story wants is to be told. It helps if someone is really listening.
There's no lesson more valuable than learning to trust yourself.
When we're asking a question, we often already know the answer.
When we're struggling with a difficult decision, we often already know what we've decided; we're just not ready to admit it yet.
With therapy, one size does not fit all. You're not like anybody else, so your therapy won't look like anybody else's. We'll design it together to fit the person you are and the goals you have.

Fun facts:

I have a background in music; I recorded and toured with a band for a few years. The music was scrappy prairie folk punk with a little twang and poetic lyrics.
I've done very rewarding work as a behavioural consultant for First Nations schools in Saskatchewan. I survived those rez roads in February in a Honda Civic.
I have decades of experience working in schools as a special education teacher. I know how to help children navigate these complex systems to succeed.
I was a school counsellor in low-income neighbourhoods for years. I learned more from my young clients than they learned from me.
I get counselling at difficult times in my own life, so I get to see the therapeutic alliance from both sides.
When you talk to me and I seem absorbed by your story, that's because I'm genuinely curious about what you're going through.
I gave up social media as an experiment years ago, and never went back to it. I've been much happier ever since.
I walk to work because the rhythm of walking is therapeutic.
I enjoy a great cup of coffee. But I can't really tell a great cup of coffee from a mediocre one. What notes of caramel and charred citrus?
I ride my bike all over Vancouver. It looks light blue but, it's blue sage.

I was born to settlers in Saskatchewan, in the beautiful Treaty 6 territory and the homeland of the Metis—mîywâsin. I'm so grateful now to live, love, and work on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations.

He/ him.

Specialized training:

Circle of Courage: Reclaiming Youth at Risk, with Dr. Martin Brokenleg
Making Sense of Resilience and Five-Step Model of Emotional Maturation, with Dr. Gordon Neufeld
ASIST Suicide Prevention Training, from LivingWorks
Human Systems Dynamics (Threat Assessment, Trauma Response, Family Dynamics), from NACTATR
Strengthening Families Advanced Group Leader Training, from the Center for the Study of Social Policy

Client fee individuals:

$150 + GST per hour

Client fee couples/families: