Kate Kernick’s journey into the world of counselling and energy healing began after her marriage breakdown 12 years ago, prompting a profound search for purpose and meaning. Driven by a soul calling and her natural ability to connect with others, Kate pursued a degree in counselling, combining her knowledge of nutrition and various healing modalities to help clients achieve emotional and spiritual well-being. Learn more in her exclusive MysticMag interview below.
What did your professional beginnings look like and what inspired you to get into this line of work?
After my marriage breakdown 12 years ago, I knew intrinsically that I needed to pursue something important and meaningful, and something that I would want to pursue even once my kids had grown up. It was a soul calling really; I had been a wife and a mother, moving all round the world with my ex-husband’s work, but then life got shaken up and I realised I needed more than that. It took a while to work through that and come to the realisation that I couldn’t ignore what was calling me. After I got back to Sydney after the marriage had ended, I kept experiencing people, including strangers, coming to me and telling me all about themselves, their difficulties, problems, worries, and traumas.
I thought it was a sign so started looking into becoming a counsellor. My nickname in school was ‘Kate the counsellor’. It ticked all the boxes for me and so started 4.5 years of study. I completed a Bachelor degree in Counselling with ACAP in Sydney. Part of me wanted to show others that it’s possible to create life after divorce and that it’s possible not to screw up your kids in the process. Also I wanted to help others, as I could see a lot of people were stuck in past stuff that was holding them back in life. It wasn’t ideal and it wasn’t how I imagined life would turn out, but looking back now I wouldn’t change that for anything.
I had done a 2-year course in Natural Nutrition a while back and knew that nutrition can play a huge role in our mental health, so I now incorporate this into my work and always recommend to clients that they seek a naturopath, herbalist, alternative healing pathways to make sure they are not deficient. Stress can do enormous damage, and create a lot of wear and tear. I can help people on an emotional and spiritual level, but it won’t hold if there’s an underlying physical condition that needs attention.
What issues can you help people resolve and who are your services designed for?
I assist people with all sorts of issues and problems. I help people unpack emotional confusion, especially with clients who have not had stable, secure childhoods in all the forms that takes – abuse and neglect, particularly emotional neglect. I help clients to do the deep dive into their own inner world to facilitate deeper self-understanding, self-responsibility and change. I help clients to understand the subconscious (it’s a wild, wild place), and how their nervous systems are overworking to the point of exhaustion. I educate clients to understand that the cause is not brain chemistry that’s giving them anxiety and depression-type states, but the result of difficult and distressing past events that directly correlate with what they are struggling with now.
What energy healing services and modalities do you use?
I use a couple of really effective modalities for helping people deactivate emotional distress and to help them to find a deeper understanding of themselves. One is EFT tapping, which if used correctly can work very swiftly to help people pull out of stressful past events. Emotional charge is what keeps past events travelling with us in the present time. The subconscious is responsible for holding the emotional charge, which then creates activation (or shut down/low mood) in the nervous system, which then produces physical sensations and symptoms.
Tapping is great for fast results, however, there’s a bit of a dance between just deactivating, versus helping clients to gain awareness and realisations so that past events can actually resolve and get filed in the analytical part of the mind, into the past where they belong. For this, I work with Internal Family Systems, which I think is a game changer for people.
I started learning Reiki and other forms of energy healing. I feel strongly that you need to be doing your own inner work so your ‘stuff doesn’t interfere with the service you’re offering. I have my own version of energy healing now which has morphed over the years as I’ve developed on my own journey of working on my own ‘stuff’. It basically works intelligently to assist the client in whatever needs to be cleared at the time. That could be reducing anxiety, right through to clearing curse-type energy, to clearing other-world technology that’s been attached. It sounds bizarre, but I’ve come across it in people too many times for it to be coincidental.
Can you share a memorable energy healing success story?
Yes, the most amazing thing I experienced was assisting a client who was waking up in a deep fear each morning. Nothing had worked for her. She was terrified of this. I offered her an energy healing, not really knowing if it would help her at all. She texted me back excitedly the next day to say the dread had completely gone and she was waking up refreshed and ready to get out of bed. She said this lasted for about 3 months.
I have since learned that there can be physiological issues and nutrient deficiencies that can cause this symptom too, so advised her to get the appropriate testing done. Since then, I have done another healing for her as she had been through some major family stress. Her mother was still hooked into her energetically from the other side (she was a very suppressive person in life), so I disconnected this attachment, and this client reported, again that her anxiety had gone. Of course, we can’t have attachments without some form of agreement from the person, so self-responsibility plays a part in this too.
What motivates you to keep doing the work you’re doing?
For clients that persist with the deep work, it’s enormously exciting to watch them have lightbulb moments and new realisations about themselves. Some people are not ready to do the deeper work, so a little bit of counselling is better than none. The world is in a terrible condition, and it rests with us as a collective to do something about it. Doing the inner work and resolving our past is the only way the world is going to change. So I like to think I’m playing a part in helping create some sort of change, in some small way.
To learn more about Kate and her work, you can visit chrysalishealthandwellbeing.com.au
