Hi, I’m jay vanka.
He / Him
Student Counsellor
My work with clients is undertaken as part of my counselling and Psychotherapy placement and is supported through clinical supervision.Therapy with me
Therapy doesn’t have to feel like a test, an assessment, or a huge professional endeavour.
You don’t need to arrive knowing exactly what is wrong, have the right words for how you feel, or know what you want to change.
Sometimes life just gets confusing.
Maybe something keeps happening and you don’t really understand why. Maybe your mind won’t switch off. Maybe school, relationships, family, work or just being around people feels harder than it seems like it should. Or maybe nothing is obviously “wrong”, but you don’t quite feel like yourself.
We can start there.
For me, counselling is less about sitting across from you and analysing you, and more about trying to understand things with you.
You know yourself better than I do
I might bring questions, ideas and things I’ve learned through psychology and psychotherapy, but you are the person living your life.
I’m not here to tell you who you are or give you a list of things you “should” be doing.
Instead, we might get curious about:
what has been happening;
what you notice in yourself;
what certain thoughts, feelings or behaviours might be doing for you;
what makes things easier or harder;
what matters to you; and
what you would actually like to be different.
Sometimes we might find something practical to try.
Sometimes understanding why something is happening is the useful part.
And sometimes you might just need somewhere you don’t have to have everything figured out.
how i came to this work
I’ve always been curious about why people think, feel and behave the way they do — particularly the things happening beneath the surface that aren’t always obvious from the outside.
That curiosity eventually led me to study both psychology and counselling and psychotherapy.
What interests me most is understanding people in context: how our experiences, relationships, environments and ways of seeing ourselves shape how we respond to the world.
I’m still learning, and I don’t think becoming a therapist means eventually having all the answers. For me, it means becoming better at listening, noticing, asking useful questions and staying curious alongside another person.
How I hope therapy feels
I really like the idea of therapy as walking alongside someone rather than trying to lead them somewhere.
That means I’m comfortable with not immediately knowing the answer.
We don’t need to fill every silence.
Confusion isn’t something we have to quickly tidy up.
And I’m not going to assume that a behaviour, feeling or way of coping is simply a problem that needs to disappear. Often things begin to make more sense when we become curious about how they developed and what they might be trying to protect, communicate or help us manage.
If diagnoses or labels are part of your story, we can absolutely talk about them. They can sometimes be useful for understanding yourself and accessing support, but they’re one part of a person, not the whole person.
My job is to stay curious about the human being sitting in front of me.
What I BelieveYou don’t need to have yourself figured out before coming to therapy.
Understanding usually needs to come before changing.Behaviour often makes more sense when we understand what is happening underneath it.You are more than a diagnosis, label, problem or difficult period in your life.
I don’t need to be the expert on you. We can be curious together.
Sometimes being genuinely heard is part of
what helps things begin to make sense.A Few Things About Me
Before studying psychology and psychotherapy, I spent more than eight years in the Australian Army. It was a pretty different world, but it taught me a lot about people, relationships, stress and what can be happening underneath the surface even when someone seems completely fine.
I’ve also had a daily meditation and breathwork practice for quite a few years, although I’m still remarkably capable of getting distracted.
I’m usually happiest when I’m moving - gym, running, yoga, surfing, just being in nature.
I’m very interested in psychology, philosophy and the strange questions about people and life that don’t always have neat answers.
You don’t need a perfect reason to start
You might know exactly what you want help with.
You might only know that something feels off.
Both are enough.
We can start with what is happening now and work it out together.
You don’t have to have it all figured out
Whatever brought you here, there’s space for it. There’s space for you.
Let’s work it out together
→ Reach out when you’re ready. I’ll be here.