You Don’t Have to Keep Pretending You’re Fine
Therapy for high achievers navigating anxiety, exhaustion, and the pressure to always be more.
About Me
Welcome to Raíces (roots in Spanish) Flourish — where your roots become your strength, not your burden. I’m Jessica Batres, a Registered Social Worker who helps people in Ontario who look successful on the outside but feel exhausted, anxious, and guilty on the inside. If you’re caught in cycles of people-pleasing, perfectionism, or carrying the weight of everyone else’s expectations — whether that pressure comes from family, culture, or the story you’ve been telling yourself your whole life — you’re in the right place. I’m here to walk alongside you.
Individual Therapy
50 minutes
Virtual across Ontario | In-Person available in Durham Region
English | French | Spanish
Are you holding yourself to impossible standards? Feeling anxious, burnt out, or caught between who you are and who everyone expects you to be? Exhausted from people-pleasing and never feeling like you’re enough? Individual therapy is where you stop carrying it alone.
Couples Therapy
50 minutes
Virtual across Ontario | In-Person available in Durham Region
English | French | Spanish
You’re in the same house but feel miles apart. Couples therapy helps you reconnect.
Speaking Engagements & Partnerships
Healing doesn’t just happen in therapy, it happens in community. Through workshops, panels, and public speaking, I create spaces where we can learn, reflect, and grow—together.
“Mental health care should not be a privilege—it’s a right. And it should reflect our stories, our culture, and our roots.”
– Julissa Arce, Mexican American author and advocate
From the blog
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We Need Each Other: On Women, Burnout, and the Healing Power of Community
Why connection isn’t a luxury for women — it’s a survival tool “I can promise you that women working together — linked, informed, and educated — can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.” — Isabel Allende Being a woman is hard. And I firmly believe it is hard because society makes it hard. The…
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How Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Performance Speaks to Identity, Belonging, and Healing
As a therapist working with second-generation Canadians, I often hear clients describe the exhausting weight of living between two worlds. The anxiety of never feeling “Canadian enough” while also not being “enough” of their heritage culture. The burnout from constant code-switching. The pressure to honour their parents’ sacrifices while building their own lives. The quiet…