Jenna Mallon

Jenna is a Registered Counselor Agency Affiliate (CAAR #CG61384461) in the state of Washington.

Jenna is a CAAR licensed milieu therapist here at Opal. She started her career as a helping professional working as a backpacking guide and peer counselor for a wilderness therapy program, working specifically with teens with early childhood trauma. During this time, she developed the perspective that through safe, unconditionally caring relationships, we heal. She also came to value the way that challenging oneself — be it a backpacking expedition or a difficult conversation — can expand one’s world and help one to live in a way that is more aligned with one’s values. Because of this experience, Jenna is now pursuing a graduate degree in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling through Naropa University, while also working on the milieu team at Opal. She was naturally drawn to Opal because of their perspective that connection and developing a values-conscious life are essential to eating disorder treatment. Furthermore, eating disorder treatment aligns with her greater values around the inherent value of all people and the need to transcend hierarchical systems of bodies in order to achieve true wellness and equality. In service of transcending hierarchical systems, Jenna has dedicated a significant amount of time in therapy, school, and on her own to examine her beliefs, identities, and positionality — especially concerning diet culture and fatphobia, their racialized origins, and their influences on her as a person. Jenna has been continually surprised by the insidious nature of these toxic cultural beliefs, and has increased her feelings of freedom and fulfillment immeasurably as she has unearthed and discarded them over the past few years, beginning Intuitive Eating and healing her own relationship with movement. Jenna‘s skill-set and knowledge base revolve around trauma, somatic experiencing, mindfulness-based interventions, humanism, art and nature therapy, transpersonal experiences, and social justice.