Debra Jane Wales knows what it means to face adversity, she also knows what it takes to survive and thrive! She’s been at the darkest moments of her life – Her experience with tragic loss, mental health, violation, and violence… Diagnosed Autistic with ADHD, recovered BPD and OCD she’s loved and hated her life, she’s lived it and almost lost it. An attempt, and a life saved, saw her hold onto hope with all of her will, as she realized…’ There’s a reason I’m here and I Still Believe…’
From that moment Debbie decided to take the ultimate level of responsibility for her life, regardless of what’s been thrown at her, from whom, and from where. Liberated, she believes every experience from the profoundly painful, to the miraculously magical, has helped her become the curious, candid, and compassionate Truth Sayer, Way Shower, she is today. True to her word Debbie is a testament to what it means to ‘Presence” and transform, helping others do so too. Specializing in Discomfort/Distress states, and Wellbeing; A Coach, Mystic, Somatic Movement and Yoga Educator, with a plethora of other certifications in holistic disciplines, Debbie is like a compass facilitating her clients' journey as they discover their True North and their misplaced verve.
Her approach is dynamic, person-centered, raw, and ‘real’. Known for her transparency, playfulness, and safe predictable presence, she helps people navigate their inner world with compassion, curiosity, and courage and in her work she helps them manage personal and life challenges as they confront the anxieties, fears, and constructs that stop them from living a fulfilled, joyful, and freer life. She empowers them to live authentically and healthily through powerful and personal change on all levels and challenges them to communicate honestly with themselves and those around them. She continuously strives to see, understand, and help each person as a unique individual whose body, mind, and spirit; The experiences that have touched them and the coping mechanisms that helped them arrive at this point, regardless of how dysfunctional or unhelpful they may initially appear, are still capacities which are integral to their transformation, growth, and dreams..
An advocate for Trauma, mental health, and Neurodiversity she challenges general misconceptions, and aims to reverse the ‘stigma narrative and unhealthy societal systems that keep people feeling stuck and shamed, but whatever personal challenge or transition you find yourself with Debbie’s ultimate mission is as ‘Clear as Day” – To help people move closer to their true selves and to feeling ‘Unstuck” – Your way – The way it’s supposed to be!
Debra Jane Wales, Certified Coach and Embodiment Teacher
Who do you typically work with and how?
Most people. Parents, executives, teens, twilighters. From addiction, loss, ND to transitions, decisions, and seekers. I don’t so much care as long as we connect, though I also know the lines I can’t and won’t cross. Ultimately I help people alleviate the tension and resistance ( physical, mental, emotional, spiritual ) around discomfort/distress/trauma states ( hence most people ) but I think it’s the essence of the energy shared that taps into their sense of freedom, peace, ease etc. I don’t hold the position we are rooted in any one diagnosis, state, personality, body location, or experience, and putting someone in one of those boxes means we can miss something, so I just need to be present with the person in front of me to know if I am the person for them.
I have nearly three decades in this vocation in some form or other so I draw from a wide skill set. I help clients gently reshape the Nervous system and brain to feel more internal safety and connection to the present. I’m seeking a Continuum of health and well-being in all systems and areas of life, while helping them develop self-honesty, agency, healthy assertiveness, and introspective questioning, gradually empowering them to be brave enough to come back out into the light! Clients are also welcome to do any of my holistic and movement offerings as a stand alone. My work is part strategy and part creative messiness – to be honest, it can’t be any other way – so whoever I’m working with, the Core of this work is the Connection and Conversation between us, so I can deliver what they need, how they need it, and when, knowing it’s open to change as we evolve in the journey together.
You’ve had a sensitive journey. Are you ok to tell us about that and how it has this impacted you and your vocation…
Sure, and it is sensitive so I need to say that. I’ll also say my journey was and is very spiritual. Apart from navigating my diagnoses, a big defining factor was losing my dad in an explosion when I was fourteen. I was really struggling, and from that moment adversity seemed to follow me around. My personality is to live my life to the full but I was equally a naive, timid and tormented innocent – Perfect victim material!! In my early twenties, I met an Italian and moved to South Italy, who domestically abused me. Shortly after we parted I was violently raped and assaulted by the son of a powerful family which was kept quiet. Moving to Rome I was drugged twice – One of those occasions resulted in my friends leaving me in the care of a military doctor (friend). I woke up and he was molesting me and the drug caused DP/DR ( Depersonalisation/Derealisation) which I struggled with for a few years on and off. After those events, I couldn’t have a healthy relationship and I was married and divorced twice by the time I was thirty. I had three second- trimester miscarriages during the second marriage and then to top it off I sat with my eldest brother as he died of Major organ failure ( Septicaemia) when he was 37.
I lost a lot of soul in my experiences and I was misunderstood in therapy. To be honest the spiritual teachings I was part of weren’t much different because there’s a lot of bypassing and group dynamics that just didn’t sit right with me. Still I buried a lot of my unhealed past and attempted to fit in and eventually, the cracks started to show and it all blew up in my face. On a whim, I walked away from my Uber successful studio in Lake Como Italy where I had a devoted client base ranging from the general public through to socialites, high-end fashion designers, athletes, and surgeons. I made terrible financial investments, pretty much lost everything, and ended up living well below the poverty line! So in my very early forties when I should have had it all together I watched my entire life, profession, and financial future go down the drain! At the same time, I smashed my coccyx and couldn’t walk for two months, dislocated my shoulder from the domestic abuse damage, had two psychogenic seizures, and had a terrible skin immune issue from all the Toxic Stress. Somewhere in that mess, I slept walked into a suicide attempt. I mean it was a literal nightmare!!
Emergency services came but something had transpired and I knew I was meant to be here. A few weeks later, still a little scared of the consequences that same ‘sense’ was with me and I knew what I was being asked to do and literally said out loud. ‘I think I’ll start again.’ An understanding I had to draw a line under how things could have been and that felt right to me because I did not want to be afraid of life, so I re-learned as if I was a child starting out but now with my eyes wide open. I took a full three-year hiatus from work and lived on a four hundred a month but I’d decided I was more important than money and I’d be ok. I went through my life and personality with a fine tooth comb. I sweat, blood, and tears the lot. Yes, I had the epiphany but the spiritual stories where it’s all taken away in a flash are rare and learning requires walking through. It’s felt exciting and scary but I took ultimate responsibility and it's the most freeing thing I’ve ever done. I have my challenges but I live from my essence and my identity doesn’t drive me. The past is still here but it doesn’t control me and I can’t control the future I can only do the best I can with what I have and choose how to respond to what comes up and own it, and yes I’m fully immersed in life!
My journey has allowed me to work my way without worrying about being boxed into a ‘Niche ’ or portraying a specific image within a type of niche. At the end of the day, I help people dissolve the hard places and mental constructs, and sometimes I’m just with them while they learn to sit in their s•••. but I know everyone who works with me ‘feels’ my complete presence, and know my intention is pure and that I come from a place of compassion and non judgment, and my journey has taught me that’s what matters.
It seems you learned to accept a lot. What does acceptance mean to you?
I feel it’s an easy word to use intellectually but in the embodied sense most of us arrive at acceptance kicking and screaming! In my case, it’s finally realising the resistance to the life I am living and the skin I am born in, is supportive ‘through’ the challenges and obstacles I lived and brought to life by bringing purpose and a sense of agency to them. Faith is a mainstay in my life, but the people, events, BPD, AuADHD, OCD, or PTSD that influenced my life negatively or positively somewhat defined my path but they aren’t the ultimate defenders of it. I learned when I could work with the resistance to ‘Life should be a certain way’ ‘If I am doing the work why am I not successful (or what’s termed successful) or healed?’ (etc.) Then I am free. No conditions or resistance because life JUST IS sometimes. We can do everything right and everything wrong, try our hardest and not try at all, surrender or fight, and life just happens how we like it and how we don't, yet when we drop the negative connotation of resistance and embrace it, we can learn to harness it’s power and love it. No lies. No acts.
No manipulation.
It’s not an easy process. There’s a tendency to think it’s accepting ourselves; warts, flaws and all but additionally, much of the work is about ‘Presence – ing’ fear and our expectations for the future, and it comes hand in hand with surrender. We don’t like to think life can be so out of control, but it can, and is. This is why I don’t speak to manifesting in the same way as others because manifesting is often resistance to acceptance and surrender. Knowing that life isn’t always fair and sometimes there is no rhyme or reason, that scares people, where I know I got dealt a hand that wasn’t easy but it’s just the way it is and I choose to do something different and not to live from the fear of it.
What are some Professional hurdles you faced and overcame?
I’ve had to jump through twice as many hoops in comparison to a Neurotypical or someone without any labels, who has equal or even below the level of intelligence or capacity to mine. It’s as hilarious as it is tragic and illogical! I have faced bias so yes overcoming stigma, though I refuse to be a victim of any of it or placate people’s assumptions about suicide for example; I’m just hoping to dispel the many myths. The tides are turning, and now I get asked to do workplace wellbeing or talks, but generally, anyone with a label still faces a little more hardship around acceptance. My clients however have never questioned my worth or stability and they would never need to.
Then the financial and logistical difficulties I faced. When I lost my financial security in my early forties, I still wanted to complete my ongoing studies, which mostly had to be completed in person, so I made some pretty radical stunts! I would book Airbnb’s 10-15 miles from where I was studying in the cheapest areas and walk both ways. I’d take three days to get somewhere that could have taken half a day had I had the financial capacity. I recall walking across the Niagara border with 40 kilos of luggage to my Airbnb six miles away so I could save the fare; I’ve done that many a time. I used the same cold bathwater for 10 days at a time trying to save every last penny, I went to food banks and begged for scholarships. It wasn’t easy but it taught me well, and it was also kind of fun!I’m weird like that.
Finally, I think also the obstacles that exist around what people term as successful or spiritual. For example, I am not conventional and don’t adhere to the identity/status/spiritual constructs most people do so it can be perceived as a lack ( In the professional sense), but I don’t care about portraying an idea that is meant to prove to people ‘I have ‘Arrived.’ It’s kind of ridiculous, especially when we speak to Freedom. I mean how can we say we are free when we are still Self/Other Conscious or decision-making based on what another has decided is successful, or what we think they want to see or hear? I consider myself very successful, I just don’t feel I want to dance to society’s idea of what it should look like. Aren’t we getting tired of that yet?
Consequently, I faced a lot of struggles around other’s acceptance.
Why do you think someone like you resonates with people, and inspires hope?
Probably because I would be classed as the underdog or misfit but I stillI came back at life like a warrior, and I’m neither stuck in the past nor defined by it. There’s a lot of fear, shame, and ageism attached when you screw it up in your forties because we’re supposed to have it sorted by then. Those things come up because status or image are supposed to mean you have got it right ( a comfortable fallacy) but we lose a lot in that transaction, and what sustains us really when everything falls away? In my case it almost did, but I still made it a statement to live my life to the max regardless. I had to find creative ways to do that, and I’m honest and say I’m still saving for a future that I wasn’t always sure I’d have because I never planned successfully for it, and even now I have to be resourceful but I don’t feel ‘less than’ I don’t let anything stop me, always and push the boundaries of what’s termed ‘Acceptable’ or ‘Usual’ at certain times in life, and given life is not getting any easier, someone like myself comes back and says just because X happened at Y point, it doesn’t make you weak, or damaged…It makes you human and struggling in ‘That moment’ and there’s humility, learning, and strength in this. I just stopped working hard to get people to like me, or worrying about their perception of me, and contrary to what many others will sell, it takes work and a long process, but I knew it was my journey to make. I’ve had many people say they wish they were so free, and transparent, and I guess they think ‘If she did it maybe I can!’
Do you feel your conditions help have helped or hindered in your chosen profession?
The answer is both! Usually, the limitations get more focus than the possibilities, and professionally, as I said it has been used against me. We do need the challenge recognized, so we don’t have to stifle a scream every time we hear ‘It’s just a label,’ because there are real consequences, but the potentials shouldn’t go unnoticed with people who are different, and some things are most definitely a help. Though I do want to add as a result of lots of our own personal growth and healing beforehand.
Firstly, I’m very passionate about my areas of interest and work, consequently everyone gets 100% from me. We Autistics tend to study Neurotypical psychology throughout our lives to fit in with the social paradigm, so we learn cognitively what NT’s know instinctively but it can be problematic acting purely on instinct. I live in a complex mind and I have to figure new ways out quickly; I see patterns, meaning, and openings others don’t normally pick up on, and I’m highly perceptive and observational and usually, when I have a sense about something, you will find I’m right, yet I don’t presume anything I check, though my clients would say when I have checked it’s like getting a loving hug while being sucker punched at the same time! (Hmm) I have incredible self-awareness, which is also skill and practice-based, and as highly empathic ( AuADHD is high on cognitive and BPD emotional/somatic ) I can understand my client's experience profoundly though I don’t get enmeshed in it. Fundamentally I’ve had to develop great resilience, and self-reliance, finding other ways to navigate this path but that’s what makes me so accomplished, and teaching these skills is second nature to me.
What do you think sets you apart?
I think it’s a mix of my journey, together with the study and experimentation in many different modalities, settings, and cultures that clients find curious. People used to say I was restless because I studied so many variations of my craft but I just let myself go with it. Even in my worst moments of life, there’s always been something that still seemed to have its eyes on the journey, so it was as if I lived two completely contradictory lives side by side that co-habited and enabled me to stay curious. Eventually, all of those things that did seem random came together, and whether in my own imperfect/perfect personal journey or those crafts I studied, the biggest take home for me was that the X Factor is HOW it’s pulled together; It’s the Presence, Connection, and Open, Honest Conversation between my client and me. The rest are tools and strategies, that I can pull from depending on what’s meaningful and relevant for my client but as I said previous it’s the essence of the energy shared that’s the real Magic. I could sell the perfect pitch with the best of them but I’m not going to say you can X steps, love yourself, or Gratitude your way into your best life, or if you find your passion or purpose it will all be ok. It’s a life practice, not a life perfect. I won’t hang off any modality like it's my true religion, nor sell false promises. Clients appreciate that honesty, because at the back of their mind no matter how much they’d like to believe in the quick fix they know they’re being had.
Someone can look like they have the whole package, but it doesn’t mean we have the perfect answer to the perfect life, or that Jack will heal like Jill, or Jill will have what Jack has, so don’t sell or buy it as such. I might be stating the obvious but If you look at a lot of transactions the fine print doesn’t match the headlines. I just don’t want to be part of that game. Life is a cycle and It’s humbling to remember three things: 1. We can be up and then be down 2. Change doesn’t happen overnight it takes commitment 3. Our journeys’ s are unique…If we avoid those things we will miss being part of life! I want my clients to have it all – The dreams, opportunities, healing, the whole Shebang but also make space for 'life happens' and a life without complete suffering or loss doesn’t exist. At least in the physical world and most people are not wide open to accept ALL suffering as an illusion. We have limits even those who say they don’t have their break point and for most it’s ‘Go give all of your money away and live on the street or fill in the blank and then see if you’re still speaking to freedom, peace and and happiness.’ We have to be honest about this stuff and surrendering to those truths, fears or delusions is part of the healing, so the real question is ‘How can we have presence, joy, and inner freedom Even though and Even if because it’s not an either/or option. If we want to ‘Be Here’ we are going to have to bump into life with its messiness, preciousness and ‘Who know’s?’ So it’s about riding any storms as a moment..
Can you explain what you mean by ‘Challenging your clients to be honest in their communication with their self and those around them?’
Sure. It’s human nature to display a certain side or lie to ourselves. We convince ourselves ‘I am this. I am definitely not that.’ ‘I would do this. I definitely wouldn’t do that and worse still we sometimes try to show that to the world, and then it can get messy because people are vulnerable and buy into our delusions easily, more so if the delusion has a reward attached.
We’re kind of all a little bit ego-deluded until we decide to do some serious excavating and that isn’t easy. Taking off the Rosy Tints isn’t for the faint- hearted. I recall Russ Hudson (The Enneagram) saying if you haven’t been humiliated by your personality you probably haven’t looked. I agree and I definitely did some cringing and laughing!! Everyone has aspects of their personality that are just not cool, a little narcissistic, or stuck, but until we are willing to open up to our blind spots we haven’t got anywhere to go. Growth would just mean more growth within the delusion, and anyway, there is real power and liberation in facing ourselves. Life isn’t easy we have to give ourselves a break, but as adults we also have to strap on our big boots. At the end of the day, it’s a brave and freeing choice.
The future: Your hopes, desires, dreams?
Well. On a global level world peace would be nice but that will probably never happen, so I will scale it down a little! I would definitely like to do more workplace events and speaking gigs. I also have a couple of projects that I developed over some years and released with individuals, but I intend to offer these with intimate and closed groups and decide if I want to get them accredited as Teacher Training. I am STILL writing my book(s) of course. (Phew) I hope to lead Health, Spiritual, and Adventure journeys; It’s obviously the next evolution.
On a personal level, improving my climbing level and photography, and completing Triple Crown Trails. There’s a lot of prep in those so it’s still a planning in process. I’ve been to 78 countries and there are many more I’d love to immerse in and combining my love of life, exploration, and vocation is paramount for me. I don’t aspire to work 24/7. Whatever transpires there will always be a special place in my heart for private sessions, and small groups because that’s where the real magic is; Being intimately part of someone’s epic journey is like nectar. Finally, my clients arrive by word of mouth and I’m fine with that but it would be nice to find that balance between doing some inspirational social media and not having it take over my life. I think that may be enough… for now!
Finally. Who do you draw strength from?
Without a doubt my mamma and having had my daddy in my life for fourteen years. We were poor and working class but they loved me. They also screwed up like most parents, but their love has seen me through. My mamma is my rock and no matter where I am in the world we speak daily.
