On Pilgrimage

About Me

Thank you for your interest in learning more about me and about Pilgrim Counselling!

I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor and a member of both the British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC) and the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). I also bring with me other professional experience that informs my work as a counsellor, including as a Philosophy instructor and ethics researcher and as a former Pastor of nine years in the city of Vancouver.​​

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When I was a young man attending university as an undergraduate, the traditional religious world view I had inherited from my home community fell apart in my hands.  It became increasingly and painfully clear to me that central pillars of my belief system were mistaken or at least highly dubious. And while that may seem like a small and even privileged sort of problem to have in life,  to me it represented a collapse of my basic framework of meaning and my sense of existential security. 

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That early experience attuned me to the way the larger meaning frameworks of people's lives can come under strain and fracture, and sensitized me the confusion and pain that can come when they do. But in the intervening years I have also discovered these experiences of existential upheaval can birth something new and better with time. I am grateful to have had caring and thoughtful mentors come alongside me in my life,  people of wisdom that listened deeply, sat with me in uncertainty and confusion, introduced me to new ways of understanding, and supported me in finding my path forward. 

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​I created Pilgrim Counselling for people facing difficulties in life that are deeply intertwined with their spiritual and philosophical beliefs and experiences. I wanted to carve out a space that is different from the clinical orientation of the mental health system and much psychotherapy, with its disease model assumptions, and its tone-deafness to spiritual and existential dimensions of experience​.  But I also wanted it to be a space that wasn't constrained by the need to uphold orthodoxies as religious institutions generally are. You can think of Pilgrim Counselling  as a way station in which pilgrims can stop, reflect, and reorient themselves for the journey of life. 

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- Jamie Hellewell (RCC, MEd, MA, PhD) 

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​And more...  In case you are curious, I'm married, and together with my wife (also a therapist!), we have three daughters, two cats, and seven backyard chickens. I've lived in East Vancouver for 25 years, and am passionately committed to my neighbourhood in the Downtown Eastside.  I enjoy playing basketball, making pizza from scratch, and (no surprise) going on multi-day walking trips!