Jackie Hall
Is a Qualified and Accredited counsellor, author, mother, keynote speaker, course facilitator and founder of the Parental Stress Centre.
She began her journey back in 2007 when she found herself the mother of two, suffering from postnatal depression and anxiety. During a particularly angry outburst that resulted in a knife catapulting across the room and almost hitting her then two year old son, Jackie received her wake up call (full story told in The Happy Mum Handbook).
- Dip. Counselling, with specialised skills in CBT for Anxiety and Depression.
- 11 years of Trauma Counselling experience including EMDR (for PTSD, anxiety and depression).
- Residential Youth Carer executing Therapeutic Crisis Intervention Training for Challenging child behaviours, Solution-Focussed Therapy and Trauma-informed approaches.
- Qualified ‘Circle of Security’ practitioner.
Jackie realised the gravity of her mental ill-health and began researching ways to change. This sent her on a six year mission to understand, change (personally) and then teach the principles of change that she found were necessary to overcome her parental stress, depression and anxiety.
Jackie discovered personally, that while there was plenty of online information available to teach parents how to handle behaviour or which gave parents simple stress techniques like ‘take time out’ or ‘walk away when angry’ there was nothing teaching parents about changing how they thought about parenting and how to work with their emotions. There was also no clear information that addressed the personal self-worth issues that often arise within parents.
With that knowledge, Jackie created Self Help for Mums to educate other mums experiencing what she had, to feel differently about their parenting experience.
In 2012, Jackie ran a 28 day Scream Free Challenge (now called the 28 Day Tame your Temper Parenting Challenge) across Australia where over 4,500 parents participated in working on their anger issues with Jackie over 28 days. This was a free online initiative aimed to educate parents on how to stop their anger by gaining a deeper understanding of the thinking process behind anger and learning how to change their perspective on the challenges they faced. She appeared twice on Channel seven’s breakfast morning show, Sunrise, talking about the challenge.
It was during this challenge that Jackie received several emails from dads also wanting help and stating their disappointment that this challenge seemed to be aimed primarily at mums. It was then Jackie realised that dads were in need of this kind of help too and she knew it was time to expand her services to approach all parents, not just mothers. That is when the The Parental Stress Centre was born.
During this time, Jackie completed her formal studies (Diploma in Counselling) to become a qualified counsellor and an accredited member of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA). She has worked in mental health retreats helping clients with depression, anxiety and drug and alcohol addictions from 2009 to 2020. Teaching clients in one-on-one settings and group workshops how to overcome mental illness and addictions.
She has gone on to achieve further studies and developed specialised skills in the areas of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Psychotherapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing), Mindfulness, Solution-Focussed Therapy, Marriage counselling and more.
She has worked in Residential youth work dealing with challenging child behaviours, aggression, using Therapeutic Crisis Intervention strategies and Trauma Informed approaches to help kids to develop their social and personal skills.
A qualified Circle of Security practitioner, Jackie uses these attachment theories in all the work she does.
Jackie’s career has spanned over thirteen years in the parenting arena and during that time she has authored five books, presented hundreds of online webinars, worked with many clients one-on-one and has become a keynote speaker and course facilitator, continuing to educate parents on how to feel more at peace with their parenting experience.
Her passion and drive for seeing changes in parents and children is relentless and anyone who works with her can see her genuine desire to see parents happier. Her natural ability to be non-judgmental and undisturbed by any experience, comes from both her experiences working with many different clients and from the very fact that the information she presents was not learnt from a pedestal of her own perfection.
Jackie often relays stories of how she has to apply the information taught into her own life and is very candid about her own imperfections and areas of growth as a person and as a parent.
Clients often voice how the information they receive from Jackie, ‘makes so much sense’ and they cannot help but leave feeling inspired, motivated to be the parent they desire to be and armed with the tools to do it.
Jackie’s mission is to dedicate her career to teaching parents how to experience peace and self-worth within themselves because this will enable parents to naturally teach these important traits to their children.
(See more of the PSC mission statement)