Hello and a very warm welcome to Lavendla and my profile page. I’m Dawn, my main training is in art psychotherapy, EMDR (eye movement, desensitisation and reprocessing) and sensorimotor psychotherapy. I will add some links below if you would like to read more about each of these types of therapy, and I’m always happy to answer questions, but essentially it means I am interested and curious about people and believe passionately in our natural ability to heal, as well as arts’ ability to increase wellbeing and provide coping strategies and skills to work through life’s difficult times. It also means I have a deep understanding of how trauma, whether that’s big ‘T’ traumas such as childhood abuse, domestic abuse, road traffic accidents and more, or little ‘t’ traumas such as living with toxic stress, attachment wounds, or difficult relationships to name a few, can affect our body’s nervous system including how we relate to others, ourselves and relate to and interpret the world around us.
Allowing yourself to be vulnerable and taking that step to access support can be so difficult and deserves the utmost respect. I will honour that by creating a safe, reliable, non-judgemental space for us to build a trusting therapeutic relationship, and will work in a way that feels comfortable for you. We can use a purely talk-based approach if this works best for you, or if you are interested in art therapy we can use an arts-based approach, a more somatic (body) based approach, or perhaps a combination. I aim to create an environment which is empathic, in which you feel able to be the true you, where you feel able to bring all the different parts of you. This means as well as working through the difficult things I believe it’s important to explore a person’s strengths, to celebrate successes in a supportive, appreciative environment.
I have 8 years’ post qualification experience supporting adults, children and young people from a variety of different backgrounds, faiths, and cultures, both neurotypical and neurodiverse. I have worked with people who have experienced emotional, sexual and physical abuse, attachment wounding, addiction, PTSD, complex-PTSD, anxiety, depression, self-harm, mental ill heath, and loss, providing a place in which people feel safe to express themselves, manage distress, develop healthier coping strategies and if needed to process trauma. I am also trained in person centred counselling, EFT (emotional freedom technique) and I work in a psycho-dynamic, trauma-informed way.
I’m passionate about how connecting with nature can increase our sense of well-being and where possible love to incorporate forest bathing or nature-based art making in my face-to-face sessions. I work online here at Lavendla or in person in the North West of England, I also run nature based therapeutic art groups from a room and grounds of small old manor house in Astley, Greater Manchester, in which we come together for mindfulness, meditation, forest bathing, and therapeutic art making.
Each person I meet, and the set of challenges they face are unique and I like to work in a collaborative way which moves at a pace that works for you. My hope is that you will feel heard and understood, that you will gain self-compassion and new ways of facing life’s challenges and that the weight of any trauma or worries that you have been carrying will feel lighter.
To learn more about some of the therapies I offer you can visit
www.emdrassociation.org.uk
www.baat.org
www.sensorimotorpsychotherapy.org
