Counselling and Psychotherapy can support us to live in ways we find more satisfying. They can help us find new ways to manage our selves and our lives when we are in crisis, feel stuck or are finding life difficult. Counselling differs from psychotherapy in that it takes place over a shorter time period and focuses on a particular issue or difficulty. Psychotherapy can be more long-term and wide-ranging. Both can enable us to see new choices and resources available to us and to make significant changes in our lives.
Art Psychotherapy
Art psychotherapy is a branch of psychotherapy where art making is used as the main form of expression. You don’t need to be an experienced artist, as the aim is not necessarily to create work to a high standard, but to use art making to help process difficult thoughts and feelings, with the overall goal of helping you develop in a safe and expressive environment.
Why use Art?
Art making has benefitted many individuals throughout the years as a means of therapeutic expression and exploration. We use the same side of our brain for both creating and storing visual images as well as talking, and many have found that creating images in a therapeutic setting can support and add light to discussion with their therapist. This in turn can encourage the ease with which we process our difficult feelings and in turn improve our overall contentment and happiness.
It can often be difficult or painful to speak clearly about the feelings that cause us the most trouble, in which case art making can provide a safe approach to feelings which we don’t feel quite ready to tackle head-on. In some cases we can’t quite find the right words to accurately convey our complex emotions and experiences, however art making can provide a more accessible means of doing this.
Talking can for some feel difficult or stressful, or the right words may just not reveal themselves. Significantly, art psychotherapy methodology makes it accessible to all societies and cultures. Often we find that the images we create can help support our words, or vice versa, providing a rich and meaningful expression.
What to expect
Sessions last for 50 minutes, at the same time and place each week. A range of art materials will be available in each session and you can choose what to make or do, with freedom to express your experiences and thoughts in your own individual way. Your images will be kept safe in folder that you can take with your when you eventually finish therapy.
The sessions are confidential and your therapist will not show your artwork or share what was said in the sessions unless she feels that you are at risk from harm or may harm someone else.
Art Psychotherapy can help with issues such as:
- Depression, including antenatal and postnatal depression
- Stress
- Anxiety
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Self-esteem
- Addiction
- Relationship difficulties
- Grief
- Bereavement
- Chronic pain and somatization
Runa Park
Art Psychotherapist
Runa Park has a BA in social work and fine art, and has completed an MA in art psychotherapy at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is a qualified art psychotherapist (Health and Care Professions Council) with a wide range of experience including counselling centres, learning disability and psychiatric communities, hospital settings and educational settings.
Runa has worked over a course of many years with a diverse range of age groups and ethnicities, including children and the elderly. She is experienced in working through various personal hardships and disabilities with clients, including those related to difficult emotions, behaviours and mental health, physical illness, life-limiting conditions, as well as physical disabilities and learning disabilities.
She is initially trained in psychodynamic art psychotherapy, however also engages with attachment-based psychotherapy, and works with various client-centred approaches such as mindfulness, psycho-educational and mentalization-based treatments.
Runa is currently working within the NHS and with a community for mothers and their children suffering from PTSD and depression, as well as private settings with adults and children with various emotional and psychiatric needs. She is currently involved in an initiative aiming to develop a community therapeutic project in South East London.
Prices
The cost is £70 per session.
Please email to enquiries@goosegreenclinic.com to enquire.
Couples Counselling
Helena Naidoo
Helena is a qualified and accredited couples therapist with ten year’s experience of working with couples.
She works with couples who want help with dealing with a range of situations: their relationship may be in crisis, they may be dealing with what feels like an unresolvable conflict, they may be struggling with the impact of a major change such as having a baby or a bereavement, anger may be an issue or they may just want to communicate better and to feel more positive about their relationship.
She doesn’t take sides or apportion blame. She offers a safe, non-judgemental space and a range of techniques to support each individual in the couple to explore their experience of the relationship, to clarify what isn’t working for them and to become more skilled at having the relationship they want.
As well as talking, the therapy sessions may also involve practicing new communication skills, structured exercises and suggestions for homework between sessions.
Please be aware that Helena only has availability at Goose Green Clinic daytimes and Saturday mornings.
Prices
The cost is £95 per session. Concessions available
Available from September 2024. To enquire about booking a session with Helena please email Enquiries .
Humanistic psychotherapy and counselling
Helena Naidoo
Humanistic counselling and psychotherapy aim to support the client in developing a stronger and healthier sense of self. They are based on a belief in people’s ability to develop their potential and to take charge of forming their own life. People are seen as whole beings made of many interacting parts: body, feelings, thoughts, senses, imagination and spirit.
Helena offers a non-judgemental, understanding experience that can help clients recognise how they have been shaped by past experiences and how they can find within themselves what they need to manage what they find difficult in the present. As a humanistic therapist she starts with where the person is in the process of coming to terms with an issue or experience rather than trying to fit someone into a pre-existing model of growth or change.
Helena has worked as a counsellor and psychotherapist since 2004. She trained at the Spectrum centre for Humanistic Psychology in north London.
Helena works with individuals and couples on a short-term (6-8 weeks) or longer-term basis. Some of the issues she works with include: anger management, anxiety, bereavement, change, culture and identity, depression, family issues, parenting, relationship issues, sexual abuse, stress, work-life balance.
Helena is a member of the UK Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners and abides by its code of ethics.
£80 for individuals
£95 for couples
Contact
Available from September 2024. To enquire about booking a session with Helena please email Enquiries .
Psychosynthesis Counselling
Claudia Canova
Have you ever find yourself thinking that you are a nice person, intelligent, with skills, yet life has been challenging recently, a bit “too much”, leaving you feeling on edge, irritable, spinning with emotions; or perhaps sad, and not wanting to do much, as you think you are never good enough for anything or anyone; you have had enough of pretending it is all ok, and you have ran out of strategies, or places where to hide; you also have lost the sense of purpose and meaning and every day seems less and less manageable.
In those moments we need support and a space for reflection. Life can be simplified and emotions can be embraced, without getting overwhelmed by them.
Whether there is a desire to get unstuck from the cycle of anxiety and depression, or to explore your potential and growth, Claudia can offer a welcoming, supportive space where to look at your struggles, and work together for you to become more who you are; where to look at personal resources and engineer something that sits well with your needs and wants; where to look at ways you have been in the world that don’t serve you any longer.
Claudia has a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychosynthesis Counselling from the Psychosynthesis Trust. It is a psychodynamic, integrative and creative model. It embodies the belief that our past informs the way we are as human beings, and that habitual patterns can be renegotiated to access our potential to become true selves.
Claudia works with young people and adults, covering areas including bereavement, depression, lack of confidence and low self-esteem, shame, guilt, sexuality, abuse, relationship issues, OCD, self-harming, procrastination, and making change. She has worked in communication and advertising corporations, in the music and entertainment industry and in education, and volunteered with disadvantaged families for a few years. Claudia is currently also co-facilitating workshops for Counsellors in training at the Psychosynthesis Trust.
She holds an up to date Enhanced DBS (Disclosures and Barring service) and is a fully insured, registered member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists, abiding by their code of ethics.
Sessions last for 50 minutes
Fee – £75 per session
Concessions are available.
For more information or to arrange an appointment, please contact Claudia on 07952674148 or via email to clacanova@hotmail.com or to enquiries@goosegreenclinic.net.