Jamie Dawdy

My Story

I help people heal their relationship with food, movement, and body image, rebuild trust in themselves, and create lasting change that feels sustainable—not forced.

My work is deeply personal. I bring 15 years of experience as a Registered Nurse across public health, education, research, leadership, and psychotherapy. My approach is also shaped by my own lived experience of recovery. I know firsthand how exhausting it can feel to be stuck in cycles of self-criticism, body dissatisfaction, emotional eating, and constantly trying harder to feel better. I also know that lasting change becomes possible when we stop relying on willpower alone and begin building the internal capacity to support it.

Today, I support clients in developing a more compassionate and trusting relationship with themselves, their bodies, food, and movement. My goal is not simply to help people change behaviours, but to help them create the conditions that make meaningful, sustainable change possible.

My Approach

At the heart of my work is a simple belief:

Lasting change happens when people and systems have the capacity to support it.

Many approaches to change focus on motivation, discipline, or trying harder. In my experience, most people already know what they want to do. The challenge is having the emotional, psychological, relational, and environmental capacity to consistently follow through.

This perspective led me to develop the Resilience-Inspired Action Framework™, an integrative framework designed to compliment psychotherapy and help individuals understand themselves more deeply and create sustainable change from the inside out.

Rather than viewing behaviour change as a matter of willpower, the framework approaches change as a developmental process built on six foundational pillars:

• Building Capacity

• Understanding Your Story

• Reclaiming Agency

• Defining Your Values and Direction

• Taking Aligned and Inspired-Action

• Shaping Supportive Environments and Relationships

Together, these pillars provide a clear pathway toward resilience, well-being, and meaningful growth

Professional Background

I bring over 15 years of clinical and systems-level experience as a Registered Nurse, with a career spanning public health, nursing education, research, leadership, and psychotherapy.

For much of my career, I have worked to strengthen health and resilience at the population level through public health practice, research, policy development, and community engagement. At the same time, I have become increasingly interested in what creates lasting change at the individual level, team and organizational-level.

This intersection—between systems and people, research and lived experience, prevention and healing—has shaped the way I approach my work today.

For the past eight years, I have worked as a Public Health Nurse focused on improving infant, child, family, and community health outcomes. My work has integrated clinical practice, research, policy development, and community engagement to strengthen resilience and relational health across populations.

This public health perspective has profoundly shaped how I understand well-being. Health is never determined by individual choices alone. Our behaviours are influenced by our relationships, environments, life experiences, and the broader social conditions in which we live. Recognizing these interconnected influences allows me to approach healing and change with both compassion and curiosity.

Alongside my public health work, I maintain a private psychotherapy practice dedicated to supporting individuals navigating body image concerns, emotional and disordered eating, self-worth challenges, and the complex relationship many people have with food, movement, and their bodies.

Clinical Training

I am a Certified Cognitive Behaviour Therapist through the Academy of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, with additional specialized training in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Enhanced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT-E) for eating disorders.

As an RN Psychotherapist, my work is grounded in evidence-based approaches including:

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

• Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

• CBT-E for eating disorders

• Resilience science

• Trauma-informed care

I believe effective therapy is both evidence-based and deeply human. While research helps guide the process, meaningful change happens through understanding, connection, and creating a space where people feel safe enough to grow.

Research, Leadership & Framework Development

My passion for resilience extends beyond individual clinical work.

I am a co-author of the Ontario Early Adversity and Resilience Framework, contributing to provincial, evidence-informed strategies that support coordinated, cross-sector approaches to resilience-building and long-term well-being.

Through both my clinical and systems-level work, I have become increasingly interested in how resilience develops and sustainable change can be achieved within individuals, but within families, communities, organizations, and systems. This exploration ultimately informed the creation of the Resilience-Inspired Action Framework™, bringing together insights from public health, psychotherapy, resilience science, behaviour change, and lived experience into a practical model for sustainable transformation.

My Commitment

Whether I am working with an individual client, contributing to public health initiatives, or developing frameworks to support change, my purpose remains the same:

To help create the conditions that allow people to thrive.

I believe healing is not about becoming someone different. It is about developing the capacity to fully engage with who you already are, moving forward with greater clarity, confidence, self-trust, and resilience.

Because meaningful change is not built on motivation alone.

It is built on capacity.

Psychotherapist | Speaker | Consultant