Play therapy
…for Children
I help children express and transform their experiences using Expressive Arts Therapy and Play Therapy. It is through play that children learn and develop normally. Also, play is the natural way that children tell their stories, express emotions, and process feeling and experiences. Children do not have the verbal maturity to communicate in counselling in the same way that adults can. Non-directive, child-centered expressive arts and play therapy offers the child a chance to express whatever is burdening him in a non-verbal, pre-cognitive way.
The art or play tools that your child chooses will depend on his personality and his needs, and may change many times during a session. I allow the child to choose the way he will express his stories, and follow and guide as he explores the play therapy room.
He may wish to play in the sand tray, a shallow box filled with sand where the child can build up a scene with symbolic figurines. He may use puppets, the dollhouse, or musical instruments to express how he feels or tell his story. Whether the child draws pictures, builds clay figures or does play acting, the medium changes, but the results do not: given a chance to fully express himself, energy is released, he can be seen and heard, and within the safe space of the art studio and the therapeutic relationship, the healing process can begin.
“It is playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.” Winnicott
Expressive Arts Therapy
…for teens and adults
First, my practice is based on a caring, receptive, empathic therapeutic relationship. I consider you to be the expert in your life and life experiences. I can accompany you as a guide or companion and help you see or feel the experiences from a different perspective. Possibly, your inner conflict is too great to put into words. Or, on the other hand, you might have talked and talked about your troubles until you feel like you are going in circles, and still nothing seems to be changing. An arts-based approach to therapy is another way of addressing challenging life issues, since it accesses wisdom and knowledge stored in other parts of the brain and body other than the cognitive part of our brains.
In a typical session, you might start with briefly discussing the issue that first brought you to therapy, or a new conflict that has cropped up and causing distress. We give the problem some space by stepping away into an artistic activity. This allows you to get away from focussing on the pain, and have a chance to experiment with materials and images in a nonverbal way. This time allows your unconscious a chance to approach the issue from a completely different angle, while working with the arts helps you express things that you might not know how to express in words. As the therapist, I do not analyze or explain your artwork to you; rather I help you have a relationship to your own artwork and artistic process. After a period of creative work or play, we explore the images that have arisen to see what message, surprise or insight they might bring to you about your life, and resources that you have to help in your approach the presenting problem with more resiliency, flexibility, creative solutions, and a greater sense of self. This is an empowering process of self-discovery.
More about Expressive Arts Therapy…here.
“The creative arts have an inherent capacity to heal the psyche” Steven Levine
Child-Parent Relationship Therapy
…for caregivers
CPRT is a filial therapy approach which replicates and amplifies that work done in a Play Therapy setting with a registered Play Therapist, by systematically teaching and coaching parents to replicate an experience similar to the “special playtime” in play therapy, in their home environment. Results show that involvement of the parents or other caregivers who have the closest attachment to the child can give an exponential increase in desired results of the therapeutic intervention: decreased distress, a greater emotional regulation, increased sense of safety, autonomy, and sense of self. Parents are primordial to the child’s healthy development; consciously learning skills to increase effectiveness of therapy enhances parents ability to work as co-agents in their children’s health and development. Originally created by Drs. Garry Landreth and Sue Bratton (Center for Play Therapy, University of North Texas) as a 10-week group Filial Therapy approach, I have adapted the content to work for busy parents and caregivers by interspersing CPRT parent sessions in between child Play Therapy sessions, or working with parents specifically on parenting skills within the CPRT framework.
Sandplay Therapy
…for All ages
Sandplay Therapy is a creative and symbolic approach to exploring the wisdom of the psyche through images. A Sandplay therapist employs a deep tray filled with sand and thousands of miniature figurines that can represent dreams, hopes, desires, emotional content, repressed memories, cultural material, family dynamics, and other content about which the conscious mind is not aware. Sandplay Therapy has been used for almost a century as a powerful, adjunct tool for deep psychological development for adults undergoing psychoanalysis. Likewise, Sandplay Therapy is employed as an additional creative approach for children who are participating in Play Therapy. I regularly include Sandplay Therapy as an additional mode of expression and healing in Expressive Arts Therapy sessions for adults, or in Expressive Play Therapy sessions with children.
My interest in Sandplay Therapy spans back 40 or more years, to my childhood when my mother was using Sandplay Therapy with her clients (based on the archetypal work of Carl Gustov Jung and pioneering sandplay work of Dora Kalff in Switzerland). In the 1980s I was fascinated with the approach, read books by Dora Kalff, used my mom’s sand tray, and as a teen, started thrifting to add to my mother’s Sandplay figurine collection. Some pieces in my current figurine collection date back to this time.
I have had the opportunity to study with several trainers, learning about various approaches to the therapeutic use of sand.
Jungian/Kalffian Sandplay Therapy with Sylvie Simonyi-Elmer, senior teaching faculty with CAST/ISST - a two year intensive training, in process.
Sand Play Therapy Levels 1, 2, 3 with Dr. Marie-José Dhaese at the Centre for Expressive Therapy (54 training hours)
Understanding Sand: A Synergetic Perspective with Lisa Dion, founder of the Synergetic Play Therapy Institute
Introduction to Neuroscience and Satir in the Sandtray with Dr. Madeleine De Little at The NSST Institute and Foundation
Coupling in the Sand Tray: Incorporating Sand Tray into Your Work With Couples with Carly Syriste (BCPTA Play Café)
To Touch … or Not to Touch? Working With Tactile Avoidance in Sandplay, a webinar with Betty Jackson, Certified Sandplay Therapist (CAST/ISST)
School counselling
…for elementary school students
I am the school counsellor at L’École Océane in Nanaimo, B.C.. This is a Francophone elementary school in School District #93, the French School Authority of B.C. (Conseil Scolaire Francophone). It is a feeder school to the Francophone Program at NDSS Nanaimo District Secondary School. In this role, I interact and support students from Kindergarten to grade 7 (and sometimes older grades), incorporating my experience and training as an Expressive Arts Therapist, a Play Therapist, and a Registered Clinical Counsellor. I am a member of the BC School Counsellor’s Association.
Over my years of teaching in the CSF, I have always been acutely aware of how emotional neediness or anxiety can have an impact on children’s learning at school. The challenge of adjusting to big life changes like separation, divorce, or removal to a foster home show up immediately in my students’ behaviour, level of concentration and ability to engage in the subject we are studying. From my perspective as a therapist, I know it is much more important to support the student emotionally and to help them regain a sense of balance in their lives, than to insist that they behave and perform in class as if their world was not falling apart. Yet all teachers have a limit to how much time they can spend with each child while continuing to teach a curriculum and manage a full class of students. When I provide a supportive relationship to a student as an Expressive Arts Therapist, I am able to help him express and transform his painful experiences. The student can become calmer, begin to have shifts in his behaviour, and is more able to tap into some of his creative strengths than when he is left to struggle on his own.
