We direct bill counselling services to Pacific Blue Cross, GreenShield, Canada Life & Sun Life! For a full list of direct billing providers, click here.
We direct bill counselling services to Pacific Blue Cross, GreenShield, Canada Life & Sun Life! For a full list of direct billing providers, click here.
Some people walk into therapy and the first thing their body does is brace. For the assessment, the judgment, the professional distance they’ve learned to expect. Jess’s work starts with undoing that brace.
There’s a steadiness to her presence that folx notice quickly. A calm that isn’t detached. A warmth that makes it possible to stop performing and start being honest about what’s actually happening. If you’ve been carrying the weight of translating yourself for the world, editing yourself in real time, managing how you come across before you’ve even figured out how you feel, this is a space where that labour can stop.
Jess works with adults and youth through individual and relationship counselling in Vancouver, Port Moody, and virtually across BC. Her nature-based therapy sessions are offered in Vancouver, Coquitlam, and Port Moody. She can support you with burnout, grief, anxiety, trauma, redefining your identity, and connecting with self-worth or self-esteem through EMDR, nature-based therapy, and somatic work
…you’ve spent a long time being told who you should be, and you’re more interested in figuring out what actually fits.
…you think better while moving, whether that’s walking side by side, working with your hands, or letting the conversation follow your body’s pace rather than a pre-set agenda.
…you’ve been holding it together so well that nobody around you realizes how much you’re carrying. And the performance of being fine has started to feel heavier than the thing you’re carrying underneath it.
Jess works with individuals and relationships using EMDR and walk and talk approaches, grounded in queer and neurodivergent communities and ways of thinking. Sessions often suit people who think better while moving, talking side by side, or grounding conversations in shared interests and community life.
Jess brings a strong sense of connection to the work, shaped by team sports (rugby especially), queer community, and showing up with others over time. Therapy here is less about self-improvement and more about finding ways to live that don’t require constant self-editing.
This is not therapy that rewards conformity, sidelines difference, or treats independence as the only goal.
Hi there! You’ve found a space where life’s messy and beautiful parts can peacefully coexist. I encourage nuance, sparked in my own queerness and experience supporting neurodivergent folx, and welcome anyone seeking a place to pause, explore, and reshape what truly matters to them. Many of the folx I support are questioning the “rules” they’ve been given about who they should be. They’re often navigating changes in identity and relationships, shifts that are deeply connected, and feel the weight of those changes in their bodies, whether through burnout, grief, or the sense of not fitting into systems around them. Together, we’ll slow down to tune into your relationships, connect with your body and emotions, and reflect on the rich identities, communities, experiences, and questions that guide the growth and changes you want in your life.
My approach to counselling makes space for you, your relationships, and awareness of the systems around you. I centre you in the healing—your pace, values, and the stories that shape you—and I tend to explore these layers through metaphors, visuals, and questions. I believe my role is to provide structure to allow you to discover and strengthen the inner resources that you already possess, while experimenting with tools and narratives that fit your unfolding story. I see counselling as one piece to the puzzle, and our time together will also explore how to build in support and resources that are with you for the long run. I’m also trained in EMDR therapy, which can support the processing of difficult experiences that feel stuck in the body or that keep replaying in ways that talking alone hasn’t been able to shift.
To give you some context on who I am, how I got here, and why that matters: I am a cisqueer, nondisabled, white woman of Italian and British/English heritage. I was born and raised on the unceded (meaning stolen) and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples in so-called North Vancouver and in recent years moved to the territories of the Kwikwetlem (kʷikʷəƛ̓əm) and *q̓ic̓əy̓ (kat-zee)*peoples in so-called Coquitlam. My upbringing and cultural roots, as well as my family experiences—especially growing up with a parent with mental illness—shape how I understand wellness. Our mental health systems are difficult to navigate and I know how crucial relationships and community are to our wellbeing and building bridges to support in our porous system.
Beyond my counselling hat, I am a community co-creator and moving soul. I’ve played team sports all my life—most influentially rugby and soccer—navigating the challenges and cheers of those spaces as they intersect with my queer identity and love for contexts that celebrate a woman’s strength and strategy. I am inspired by community events that centre diverse voices through art and story, specifically ones that push beyond the social ‘boxes’ or remind us of the historically and beautifully celebrated identities predating colonial oppression. Alongside these passions, I balance my time with cooking a vegan dish and burning through reality tv, staying active outside with friends, and making art with no direction.
Finding a counsellor that aligns who you are, the resources you have access to, and what you hope to build is a tricky intersection. If you’ve felt seen or curious here, I’d love to offer a free consultation to connect and explore what your messy beauty might want to become.
You’re ready or willing to reflect. Not in a pressure-filled, produce-an-insight-every-session kind of way, but in the way that lets you connect dots you didn’t know were related.
You want accountability without the pressure that typically comes with it. We might decide that reflection or action between sessions would be supportive, and I’ll check in on your experience, but there’s no expectation to perform progress on a timeline.
You think a lot but don’t feel it. You’re excellent at analyzing your life, your thoughts, your emotions, and through all that analysis, you know there’s a disconnect with your body and how you relate to the people around you. That gap is something we can work with.
You want a therapist who’ll meet you in the mess. Show up with your full self. It’s welcome here.
You’re looking for fast solutions, rigid structure, or highly directive therapy without space for reflection, emotion, or relational context.
My work tends to move at a pace that honours the building of trust. It makes room for complexity. It invites curiosity rather than quick fixes. If that sounds frustrating rather than relieving, we might not be the right match, and that’s worth knowing before we start.
Relaxed. Calmer. Accepted.
Curious and reflective in a way they didn’t expect, because the space made it feel possible rather than required.
Connected, to themselves and to the parts of their life they’d been white-knuckling through on autopilot.
It usually happens around the third session and beyond, and then again midway through each session after that. There’s a point where the room starts to feel familiar, where being here stops being a performance and starts being a practice.
By that point, more emotions and thoughts begin to flow. Not because I’ve pushed for them, but because the relationship has made space for them to arrive on their own.
Healing happens mostly outside the counselling room. In your relationships. In the spaces where your body gets to do what it knows how to do. In the communities that hold you without requiring you to explain yourself first.
This comes from my own lifelong connection to sports communities, where I’ve been my most proud, vulnerable, messy, funny, direct, and strong self. Supportive communities hold enormous space for healing. Sometimes counselling helps you identify where those spaces are and build the confidence to access them.
Counselling is one piece of the puzzle. Our time together will also explore how to build in support and resources that stay with you for the long run.
Topic shifts. When someone makes a big statement or sits with a big feeling and then quickly moves to something else. That shift isn’t random. It often reveals important layers in the work.
When things are moving fast, but not in an exciting, building-toward-something way. Sometimes speed is a sign that the body is overwhelmed, and slowing down is what makes reflection and connection possible again.
When a moment of ease is needed. Sometimes a relational question or a moment of humour is what helps someone land back in a space where they can keep going.
Topic shifts. When someone makes a big statement or sits with a big feeling and then quickly moves to something else. That shift isn’t random. It often reveals important layers in the work.
When things are moving fast, but not in an exciting, building-toward-something way. Sometimes speed is a sign that the body is overwhelmed, and slowing down is what makes reflection and connection possible again.
When a moment of ease is needed. Sometimes a relational question or a moment of humour is what helps someone land back in a space where they can keep going.
The first three sessions are for us to go slow. This is a relationship we’re building, a space where you get to show up as you are, and a key ingredient of that is time.
Taking time tends to get us where we want to go faster. That sounds contradictory, but what I’ve seen over and over is that the trust built in those early sessions is what makes the deeper work possible later.
No minimizing feelings. The bigger the better. And when I say that, I mean it: I’ll always lean toward matching the weight of what you’re carrying rather than shrinking it.
“That sounds shitty and so overwhelming.” Sometimes these are the words that land when there’s so much going on and it feels like the most human response.
I ask a lot of questions. They direct our collaboration toward uncovering relational perspectives, narratives of self, and the context surrounding what you’re going through. The questions tend to look at you, your relationships, and what’s happening around you, all at once.
Isolate you in the work. You and your relationships and context are deeply interconnected, and we’ll find more ways to support you by looking at all the pieces together.
Minimize your feelings. There’s no “too much” here.
Rush the first three sessions. The relational seeds get planted early, and they need room to take root.
Create room for structure and flow. To be held and to shift. To dream and to reflect. To pause and to question. I’m an in-between person, and in session it shows up as creating opportunity for both.
Check in with your goals and what you’re wanting to keep or change in counselling, while also leaving room for whatever needs to surface.
Move between warmth and curiosity. Tenderness invites warmth. Complexity or some hesitancy invites curiosity. We go back and forth between the two so we can open new perspectives and build the bodymind connection.
The therapy room can feel isolated, contained in ways that are sometimes helpful and sometimes limiting. Walk and talk opens that up. It works well for folx who are restless, who process better when their body is in motion, who find sustained eye contact draining, or who are immunocompromised and feel safer meeting outdoors.
Getting out of the room, with a conversation beforehand about how walk and talk works for you, can shift the dynamic in ways that matter. Side-by-side conversation has a different texture than face-to-face. The body moves, and sometimes the thinking moves with it.
Jess offers nature-based therapy sessions in Vancouver, Coquitlam, and Port Moody.
Therapy sessions with Jess Picco, MCP, RCC can be directly billed to most extended health insurance providers. She currently offers virtual sessions as well as in-person sessions in Vancouver & Port Moody. Her nature-based therapy sessions are offered in Vancouver, Coquitlam & Port Moody.
