PSYCHOTHERAPY/CREATIVE ARTS THERAPY
Stephanie
Psychotherapy offers an opportunity to work with someone to encounter, address and understand your emotional experiences and how they may impact your life and your relationships. Sometimes motherhood or pregnancy is not the experience you hoped for and it can help to meet with someone who is not a friend or family member to work through feelings that may feel overwhelming, uncomfortable or distressing. It is a process of giving space and attention to what feels difficult (and also, at time, what feels good and life-affirming).
Arts Therapy is simply another way of working with your personal experience and is one possible option for our work together. Â It is concerned with expressing on the outside something that is happening on the inside, which gives you the chance to look at things in a new way.
This creative form of psychotherapy uses expressive techniques (such as story-making, art materials etc) to offer support, to understand ourselves and to build helpful relationships. Sometimes it can be difficult to put into words what we are experiencing. As a result, it can be hard to engage with traditional verbal therapies. A creative approach utilises various art media, as well as words, to form new perspectives on life situations and to make positive changes.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?
The perinatal period (from the beginning of pregnancy throughout the first year or two of your baby’s life) can be a time of intense emotional upheaval, confusion, and even trauma. Your identity may be changing and causing discomfort, you may feel you’re not getting enough support and the demands of caring for a new baby may be overwhelming. These are all reasonable responses to a life-changing experience; our focus in therapy is how to build resilience and ways of coping with what may sometimes feel unbearable.
Different life experiences affect the way we see ourselves, the way we are in relationships and the way we interact with the wider world. In therapy we give ourselves time to acknowledge our past experiences and make sense of our present-day way of being in the world in relation to these experiences. We can build realistic thoughts of the future while making changes in the present. For example, some clients express feeling more equipped to cope with the demands of a young baby, feel more confident and accepting of themselves, understand better the complex feelings they are having or find it useful to think about their own experiences of being parented as they embark on being parents themselves.
WHAT CAN I EXPECT?
I offer an initial, 1-hour session to give us a chance to meet and for you to discover if what I offer is what you are looking for at this time. At the end of the session we will make a decision about whether to engage in a longer piece of work. This may be just a few sessions or it may be for longer which doesn’t need to be decided at this early stage. Therapy is an evolving, personal process and we will discover together what length of time will best support you.
I will suggest an agreement for our work together which you can add to, and will include details of confidentiality, payment and missed sessions, physical safety and session regularity. We will make an agreement on this before moving forward.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
I propose to work alongside you in a confidential, thoughtful and respectful way, and welcome anyone who has a concern that could benefit from a psychological approach. Within this perinatal context I particularly welcome pregnant women or parents who feel they may benefit from a psychological approach to addressing issues arising either in pregnancy or in the first two years of your baby’s life.
ABOUT STEPHANIE
I have worked for 12 years in the NHS as a Dramatherapist / Psychotherapist and have a private therapy and supervision practice. I also offer reflective practice in several organisations across Scotland.
I abide by the Health & Care Professionals Council Standards of Performance, Conduct & Ethics. You can find the document by following this link.
I am a member of the British Association of Dramatherapists and am registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
My HCPC registration number is AS14006. You can check my registration status here.
My practice is insured with Holistic Insurance Services.