Deborah Aita

I work as an arts psychotherapist so first of all let me give you an idea of what that is.  Imagine your life as a journey.  Perhaps you feel stuck at a crossroads on this journey; or you are carrying a load that is too heavy for you; you may feel that you are slipping down the side of a cliff; or that there's a dark fog around you making it too dangerous to move.   You may feel lost and in need of a map.  These are all metaphors, and using them to explore your life, your stories, histories, relationships, and events, helps you understand yourself more deeply through this combination of left- and right-brain thinking.  I guide you to use both your creative intuition and your cognitive thinking, to help you understand the roots (another metaphor!) of your feelings and thoughts. 

And what might that look like in practice? As well as thinking and talking about the issues you can focus on metaphor by making something - a drawing or painting, a poem, a story, and you can use objects, pictures, puppets or movement to make meaningful connections, bringing image and story together.  This process leads to a deeper, more layered, understanding of your feelings and thoughts, past and present, and this understanding comes in all shapes and sizes - emotional, cognitive, social, visual, kinaesthetic, spiritual. 

No previous experience of the arts is necessary because this therapy is about expressing who you are and not about making something 'perfect'.  The way you express yourself is entirely individual to you.  Although many people say they're not creative I firmly believe we are all creative in our different ways.  There are common difficulties and symptoms that bring people to therapy but it is how these are experienced by you, as someone with a unique history, that is key to how you can recover from them.  You may have been given a diagnosis but it is your own personal experience that is important to understand so as to work towards change.  I can support you to draw on your strengths through development of mindfulness and body based practice which gives further tools to think around a problem and deepen your understanding of yourself. 

There is a great deal of research evidence to show that Arts Psychotherapies are effective in treating the full range of psychological issues and symptoms,  and in particular Dramatherapy is indicated for work with trauma.  All trauma has a story but it can be very difficult for those who have experienced a traumatic past to remember or piece together their own particular story.  Some stories feel too painful to acknowledge so we hide them, guard them not only from others but from ourselves.  These hidden stories, or parts of stories, can control us, impacting on our way of living, affecting our relationships and behaviour, and we may feel powerless to change.  Working safely and confidentially I support you to access your story, through metaphor and symbol, so that the stories that matter to you can be released from your unconscious and cease to control you.

Many people do not know what ails them and if this is the case Arts Psychotherapies can be particularly helpful as they work 'obliquely', coming sideways at a problem, utilising the non-rational, pre-verbal, limbic parts of the brain and what is sometimes called 'implicit memory', to find what the issues are.  With ongoing developments in neuroscience we now know how important it is to access these parts of the brain in order to ensure long lasting healing.  I offer evidence based practice and safe structures to support you to fully engage in the process of examining your life, behaviour and feelings, so that you can live your life more fully.

Do phone or email me if you have any further questions or if you would like to book for an initial session to see if this approach, and my way of working, would suit you.  I see clients both online and face to face.

Grief

Loss

Death

Dying

Complex Trauma

Developmental Trauma