Jennine Estes Powell, a licensed marriage and family therapist, is the owner of Estes Therapy and Spokane Counseling Hub. She graduated from PLNU in 2001 with a B.A. in psychology and a Spanish minor.
“I was going to a high school in the Bay Area, and I knew what I wanted,” she said. “I had gotten involved in a bad crowd, and I knew I needed to get out of there and go to a good school. I started looking at Christian colleges. When I went down to Point Loma and visited, I fell in love with it for obvious reasons. It was a phenomenal education.”
“When I went down to Point Loma and visited, I fell in love with it for obvious reasons.”
“It was also really high[ly] demand[ing],” she added. “I studied all of the time. I have a learning disability in reading and writing comprehension. I had a lot of late nights in the dorms, and all my friends would come together and try to support and help me. I didn’t know there were resources for getting support, so it was never even an option for me. I just knew I struggled, so I would stay up and cry, and I would have a hard time.”
Despite the difficulties, Powell enjoyed her time at Point Loma.
“All of my friends, and the community, were amazing. The RAs were fabulous. I had amazing professors that were really encouraging and supportive. I really didn’t lean on them to be like, ‘Oh, I have a learning disability; I can’t do it.’ It was just more like, ‘I have to find a way through it because that’s the only way you have to do it.’”
As a part of her degree requirements, Powell worked in the counseling center on campus and did a practicum at the YMCA in San Diego, where she gained more counseling experience and prepared for graduate school.
Her early career wasn’t exactly a straight line. She worked in accounting and serving before committing to graduate school and further study at Alliant International University. She was told that with her disability, it would be incredibly difficult to graduate, and once she did that, difficult to build a private practice.
“I was told it will take years to build a private practice,” she said. “‘Don’t do it. You won’t be able to do it. It’s gonna be too hard.’ And so I decided to do it. And it took me six months to build up a full-time cash paying practice. I had to learn how to get clients in my door, and learn how to do the marketing.”
“You tell me I can’t? I will. When people tell me I can’t do it, it’s more about ‘I can.’ I force myself to do it.”
After moving her practice under a specialized supervisor, Powell moved into the niche of emotionally focused therapy (EFT), a kind of therapy that focuses on short-term treatment, long-term impact for couples. Quickly, Powell realized that she’d found her specialty.
“I started hitting goals in no time,” she said, “and so I specialized in emotionally focused therapy. I got certified in it and I started taking trainings in the EFT world and working with couples, which is how then I started becoming more of an expert in the EFT world.”
All along the way, there were people who told her that she was going to fail. And every time, Powell pushed back.
“You tell me I can’t? I will,” she said. “When people tell me I can’t do it, it’s more about ‘I can.’ I force myself to do it.”
Early on in her career, various publishers reached out to Powell, requesting that she write a book about her experience in the EFT world, particularly with a learning disability. A few of her interviews in magazines were taking off, as well as a weekly column called “Shrink Wrap.” As her presence grew, so did the demand for a book — however, writing was still a challenge for Powell, so she had to figure out a way to get her thoughts on the page that made sense for her.
“The hardest thing for me is to write. It really takes a lot, and so I asked [the publisher] if I could have a co-author. I have the education and the training to know how to work with these topics, but it’s putting it into word format that’s the tough thing. I got my co-author, and we ended up writing the book together. I came in with the theoretical models. She kept a good handle on words.”
Powell’s book, Help for High-Conflict Couples, draws on her decades of experience as a marriage counselor to help couples figure out better ways to handle conflict. In addition to her book, Powell also runs two counseling businesses and has learned a lot about how to be both a counselor and business owner.
“When people tell you you can’t do something, or simply because you have a learning disability, it doesn’t mean that you can’t.”
“I have two companies and a lot of therapists underneath me, so I’ve had to teach them how to find ways that work for you and your body,” she said. “For example, I have [my] learning disability, and I had to find ways around it. Every clinician works differently. I have this EFT conference where we have leading experts come from all over the world to train clinicians. And then I’ve got my book, so it’s been fun with my ability to do a lot of fun things. And I’ve had to fall a lot of times as well. You have to learn how to work with it. It’s helping people know that when people tell you you can’t do something, or simply because you have a learning disability, it doesn’t mean that you can’t. You just have to find a strategic way through it, and you have to keep going and use your resources.”
