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Creative Connection To Heart and Soul.
Do you want things to be different ?
As a clinician, it is my goal to listen carefully, work flexibly and respectfully according to each individual client’s unique challenges, provide empathy, insight and hold a creative space for our work together. In my ten years of clinical practice as, I developed a biopsychosocial and spiritual framework in my practice. My theoretical framework is holistic, relational and integrative. I take a flexible, creative approach to our work, and am comfortable working with both talk, and/or creative and expressive arts therapies.
Services
Individual Psychotherapy
Creative Art Therapy
Psycho-educational Consultation
Coaching
Creative Art Therapy
Each treatment plan is unique depending on the client. In the initial stage of planning treatment, we discuss whether you resonate with working in a more structured way, which means I may offer directives and protocols that fit challenges such as complicated bereavement, grief and loss, complex trauma, attachment issues and self esteem etc. Often clients choose to work more organically, which means allowing whatever needs to unfold emerge through creative process.
Usually we start with a check-in either through verbal conversation or guided visualization or mindfulness experience. You may choose to share your week or a review of the last session. Some sessions you might want to get right into the art making and not talk. Both ways of working are welcome.
Depending on what resonates for you, you might choose to work following your own instincts as to topic/themes and choice of art materials ( sand, musical instruments, movement ). You might choose a specific theme to work on or continue exploring a theme from the previous session. Alternatively, I might offer you an art directive, prompt or specific art media, when you wish to explore an issue more deeply and feel the directive would support your art making process. There is an art table with a variety of materials for you to explore and experiment with and you are free to choose what feels right for you.
Afterwards we will look at the art together and you are welcome to share (or not share) whatever you feel comfortable sharing, i.e. what you notice, what surprises you, or maybe how the art making process was for you, any ideas, thoughts or feelings or challenges that came up in your process. No artistic training or art background is necessary because we focus on the creative process.
Sessions may include:
Art making with a focus on process
Movement or bodily activation such as focusing on breath or “embodying” your artwork
Guided visualization exercises
Personalized spiritual practices
Writing exercises and keeping a journal
Singing bowl meditations and chakra balancing
To learn more about treatment and the intersections of trauma, brain research, attachment relationships, complicated grief and recovery, you can check out a book I co-authored: Complicated Grief, Attachment and Art Therapy: Theory, Treatment and 14 Ready-to-Use Protocols.
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My Practice
Experience
I am an award winning visual artist and illustrator, author, educator and Creative Art Psychotherapist and I have been doing this for over a decade. My clinical training includes York University, Catholic Family Services Toronto, Hinks Dellcrest Center for Childrens’ Mental Health, Advance Treatment Clinic (ADHD services) and University Hospital Network (UHN). I am a member of the Children in Limbo Task Force in Toronto. In the summer of 2017 I completed my Master of Social Work at Smith College, became registered and added clinical Social Work to my private psychotherapy practice. My commissioned art has appeared on the covers and inside of numerous publications. In terms of publications, I co-authored Complicated Grief, Attachment and Art Therapy: Theory, Treatment and 14 Ready-to-Use Protocols published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Last year I was invited to OACCPP Annual Conference to present a workshop on Trauma and Art Therapy.
Who Are My Clients?
I work with adults as well as latency age children and adolescents who struggle with issues related to a history of trauma, depression, anxiety, romantic problems, body image, existential/spiritual crises, attachment issues, and complicated grief.
Do you wish things could be different? Do you find yourself struggling with:
• Intimate relationships and getting your needs met?
• Constantly seeking new relationships and surfing online dating sites?
• Perpetually stuck in one dissatisfying, co-dependent relationship after another?
• Avoiding your feelings because they lead to constant worrying?
• Poor body image?
• A lack of meaning and purpose? Creative blockages? Spiritual crises?
• Feeling stuck, lacking a sense of purpose or meaning, creatively blocked?
• Feeling like an outsider?
• A history of anxiety, depression, complicated grief or complex trauma?
"The roots of resilience and the capacity to withstand emotionally aversive situations without resorting to defensive exclusion are to be found in the sense of being understood by and existing in the mind and heart of a loving, attuned, and self-posessed other"
— Diana Fosha
What makes me different from other therapists?
I am a practicing artist and my artmaking process has been personally therapeutic. I love to inspire and share what I have learned and I am grateful for the wisdom my clients' share with me as we co-create together in sessions. Art is really my passion and compass in life. I have years of lived experience plus excellent academic clinical training. I am clinically trained, licensed and comfortable working flexibly between talk and creative/expressive therapies.