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Creative approaches
When talking is not the whole answer.
Writing therapy and image-based work, within talking therapy. For creative minds or for people who find words alone challenging.
Online across the UK, or face to face in Brighton or Lewes. £80 per 50 minutes.
- BACP accredited, member 374395
- Trained in writing therapy and creative arts counselling
- No artistic skill required, ever
- A free 15-minute call
What is creative counselling?
Counselling that uses writing, image and other creative ways of working alongside talking, rather than instead of it. You might write between sessions, or work with a picture, or map something out on paper. It is used because some material reaches the page long before it reaches speech, not because it is gentler or easier.
You do not need to be able to draw.
This is the objection that stops most people, so it goes first. Nothing here is assessed, interpreted for hidden meaning, or looked at by anyone else. There is no skill involved and no result to produce.
A drawing here is not artwork. It is a way of putting something outside your own head so that both of us can look at it, which is a very different job from making something good. People who describe themselves as hopeless at art are often the ones this suits best, precisely because they are not trying to make it come out right.
The same is true of writing. Spelling, grammar and structure are irrelevant. Nobody is marking it.
What this is not.
I am a BACP accredited counsellor trained in writing therapy, and I hold a Certificate in Person Centred Creative Arts from the Association for Person-Centred Creative Arts. That is not the same as being an art therapist.
Art therapist and art psychotherapist are titles protected by the HCPC, held by people who have done a different training and are on a different register. If art therapy is specifically what you want, ask for an HCPC-registered art therapist and I will happily point you toward one.
What I offer is counselling, with creative ways of working available in it.
The two ways this usually goes.
Neither is a programme. They are things available in the room when talking alone is not getting there, and either can be the whole of the work or none of it.
Writing therapy.
Writing, in or between sessions, as the route into something. Sometimes a letter that never gets sent. Sometimes an account of an event written from a distance you choose. Sometimes a few lines when a whole conversation would be too much.
Image and creative arts work.
Working with picture, colour, shape or material instead of sentences. Useful when the feeling has no name yet, or you're looking for a different perspective on an issue.
And ordinary talking.
Most of the time, this. The creative work is one channel among several, and we move between them as the material asks for it rather than on a schedule.
When this tends to help.
Not a list of conditions. These are the situations where clients and I have found the creative route reaches something the conversation kept sliding off.
When you cannot find the words.
Some experiences do not arrive in language, and being asked to describe them can turn into a performance of describing them. Writing and image can get underneath that.
When speech itself is the effort.
Some weeks talking costs more than it returns, which will be familiar if you are autistic, exhausted, or both. Writing lets you arrive with something already made, rather than having to build it live in front of someone.
When you can explain it perfectly and nothing shifts.
A very articulate account can be a way of keeping a distance from the thing itself. Working with an image or a piece of writing, tends to help give a different way of understanding something.
When talking about it directly is too much.
With difficult memory, saying it out loud is not always the safest first step. Writing gives you control over how close you get and how fast, and you decide what, if any of it, we read together.
When you think in pictures rather than sentences.
Plenty of people do. Being asked to convert that into orderly speech before it counts is an unnecessary tax, and it loses things on the way.
What a session actually looks like.
Much like any other counselling session. Fifty minutes, the same room, the same conversation. Most weeks nothing creative happens at all - unless you want it to.
When it does, it is usually small and it is always suggested rather than instructed. I might ask whether you want to write something down instead of saying it. I might suggest we do a guided visualisation which you can draw.
You can say no, and no is a complete answer that needs no reason. Nothing you make is kept, filed or shown to anyone. It is yours, and you can take it away or throw it away at the end of the session.
Online, this still works.
Writing works exactly as well online, and for some people better, because you are in your own space with your own materials and nobody is watching you think.
Image work online means you have paper and something to make a mark with, and you hold it up if and when you want to. You are not obliged to show me anything.
Questions people ask.
Do I have to do the creative parts?
No. Plenty of people come to me knowing I work this way and never once pick up a pen. It is available, not required, and the work is not lesser without it.
Will you interpret what I make?
No. I am not going to tell you what your drawing means about you. If we look at something together, the questions come from you: what you notice, what surprised you, what you would change. The meaning is yours to find.
Is this art therapy?
No, and the difference matters. Art therapist and art psychotherapist are protected titles held by people registered with the HCPC after a specific training. I am a BACP accredited counsellor trained in writing therapy and creative arts counselling. If art therapy is what you are looking for, say so and I will point you toward someone registered to provide it.
Do I need to buy anything?
No. There is paper and there are materials in the room. For online sessions, anything you already have at home is fine. Nobody needs to buy art supplies.
Does it cost more than ordinary counselling?
No. It is the same session at the same fee, because it is the same work.
What if I hate it?
Then we stop and go back to talking. Saying that something did not work is useful information rather than a failure, and I would far rather hear it than have you politely endure another six weeks of it.
Fees.
The first call.
Free. Fifteen minutes by telephone. A good place to ask whether this way of working would suit you.
Sessions.
£80 for fifty minutes, payable a week in advance. The same as any other session.
Where.
In person in Brighton or Lewes, or online across the UK. All of this works either way.
Worth asking about on the call.
If some of this sounds like the thing you have been trying to explain to people, say so when we speak. Fifteen minutes, free, and you decide afterwards.
BACP accredited, member 374395. Trained in writing therapy and creative arts counselling.