I find the experience of being human too nefarious and complex to find any singular perspective restorative on its own. Sustainable change and growth is nourished from many directions. The pillars upon which I rest my therapeutic interventions are generally: animistic (of art), somatic (of the body) and cognitive (of the brain).
A goal for me, as your sherpa of self-exploration, is to help you have a different* relationship to yourself and the world around you. You are the expert of your experience (which can sometimes be too overwhelmingly close, or too distant lying under the layers of dust and caution tape we call coping mechanisms).
*Different- in the sense I am using it here- means patient, authentic, and compassionate.
Why include art and somatics in therapy?
Our bodies have a built in system (in our nervous system) that can organically get through and bounce back from challenging experiences. I address the body’s three Behavioral Systems that are responsible for responding experiences: cognitive (thoughts), emotional (feelings), and physiological (body sensations). Each system informs the next, and each speaks a different language (often acting as poor interpreters of each other). Talk therapy may radically improve much of the relationship between the cognitive and emotional systems, while the physiological system remains elusive and stuck. This explains the very human frustration of knowing better yet continuing to do the same thing and feel the same way. Art and somatics are tools that wed the knowing with the doing.
What does this look like in a session?
Alongside conversation, sessions often include hints at body awareness, movement, and breath work in order to attune to deeper layers of emotions and patterns. In other sessions, intentional “art ice-breakers” have you put pen or brush to paper to strengthen your somatosensory* network.
*a fancy word referring to the physiological branch of your system (body sensations).