What is Art Psychotherapy?

Art Therapy is a form of psychotherapy where art making is used as the main form of expression. You do not 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. Creating images in a supportive therapeutic setting enables the potential to reflect on our difficulties.

Art therapy can illuminate and define these difficulties. In some cases we cannot 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.

Significantly, art therapy 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 will I be doing?

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:

Art Psychotherapist Runa Park

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 and registered 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, neurological or 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.

To enquire about booking a session, please email containingspace@gmail.com or telephone on 07803 076 015.