Dramatherapy
Dramatherapy is a form of psychological therapy in which all the performance arts are utitlised within the therapeutic relationship. Dramatherapists are both artists and clinicians and draw on their trainings in theatre/drama and therapy to create methods to engage clients in effecting psychological, emotional and social changes.
The Therapy gives equal validity to body and mind within the dramatic context. Stories, myths, play-texts, puppetry, masks and improvisation are examples of the range of artist interventions a Dramatherapist may employ. These will enable the client to explore difficult and painful life experiences through an indirect approach.
Goals of Dramatherapy
1. Promote positive behavioural changes
2. Improve interpersonal relationship skills
3. Integrate physical and emotional well-being
4. Achieve personal growth and self-awareness
5. Improve overall quality of life
Play Therapy
Play Therapy helps children in a variety of ways. Children receive emotional support and can learn to understand more about their own feelings and thoughts. Sometimes they may re-enact or play out traumatic or difficult life experiences in order to make sense of their past and cope better with their future.
While it may look like an ordinary playtime, play therapy can be much more than that.
A trained therapist can use playtime to observe and gain insights into a child’s problems. The therapist can then help the child explore emotions and deal with unresolved trauma. Through play, children can learn new coping mechanisms and how to redirect inappropriate behaviors.
Goals of Play Therapy:
1. Developing responsibility for behavior
2. Establishing successful strategies for addressing concerns and coping
3. Developing unique and creative solutions for their problems
4. Learning how to respect and accept oneself and others
5. Learning how to express emotion appropriately
6. Developing empathy and respect for how other people feel
7. Learning social and relational strategies for interactions with friends and family
Theraplay
Theraplay interactions focus on four essential qualities found in healthy parent-child relationships
- Structure: The adult, the leader in the relationship, creates organization and predictability for the child which communicates safety
- Nurture: The adult provides caring that can calm and soothe the child in a manner that makes them feel good physically and emotionally
- Engagement: The adult is present in a manner that the child experiences being seen, heard, felt, and accepted
- Challenge: The adult supports the child in the acquisition and mastery of new skills, enhancing the child’s sense of competence and confidence
With the support of the Theraplay practitioner, parents learn to play with their child in a way that establishes felt safety, increases social engagement, expands arousal regulation, and supports the development of positive self-esteem for both the child and the parent.
Goals of Theraplay:
1. Increase child’s sense of felt safety/security
2. Increase child’s capacity to regulate affect
3. Increase child’s sense of positive body image
4. Ensure that caregiver is able to set clear expectations and limits
5. Ensure that caregiver’s leadership is balanced with warmth and support
6. Increase caregiver’s capacity to view the child empathically
7. Increase caregiver’s capacity for reflective function
8. Increase parent and child’s experience of shared joy
9. Increase parent’s ability to help child with stressful events
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy recognises the lasting impact of trauma. This is when stressful events that you experience or witness make you feel unsafe, helpless or vulnerable. You’ll work with a therapist to think about what has happened to you, not what is wrong with you. The focus is on compassion listening and understanding rather than making a diagnosis.
Psychotherapy can be a powerful, life-changing experience which can help you to improve your mental health, overcome social or emotional challenges, and fulfil your potential.
Goals of Psychotherapy:
1. Express your feelings and process them in a safe and supportive relationship
2. Gain deeper insight into the issues you face
3. Talk about things in a confidential environment that you might not feel be able to discuss with anyone else
4. Find better ways to cope with feelings and fears
5. Change the way you think and behave to improve your mental and emotional wellbeing
6. Improve relationships in your life, including with yourself
7. Make sense of any clinical diagnoses you have had by understanding what has happened to you
8. Heal from trauma
9. Learn to communicate better and tolerate differences in yourself and others.
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP)
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) is the model of intervention developed by Clinical Psychologist Dan Hughes. DDP is a therapeutic parenting approach that uses what we know about attachment and developmental trauma. It is a treatment for families with adopted or fostered children who had experienced neglect and abuse in their birth families and suffered from significant developmental trauma.
The fundamental principles of DDP-informed parenting are Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, and Empathy. (PACE), for the purpose of increasing the child’s psychological safety, and readiness to rely on significant attachment figures in their lives, the ability to resolve and integrate the dysregulating experiences being explored. A person who is the primary attachment figure to the client will be actively present.
Goals
- Help create deeper emotional connections in the relationship between a parent/carer and their child.
- Help the parent/carer to make sense of difficult or confusing behaviour.
- Help the parent/carer and child to make sense of the child’s feelings in the past and present, and the link between them.
- Help the child to understand that the parent’s/carers’ motive are different to those previously experienced.
Art psychotherapy
Art psychotherapy is a form of expressive therapy that draws on your inner creativity to improve physical, mental and emotional well-being. Using the arts has a powerful capacity to access elements of experiences, thoughts and emotions that talking therapy alone cannot. You require no pervious art experience. Within the sessions you will have a choice of accessing a range of art materials for example paints, pencils, music, chalks, collages, poetry, nature and literature.
Goals
- Utilize the creative process to help people explore self-expression
- Find new ways to gain personal insight and develop new coping skills.
- Explore emotions
- Cope with stress
- Boost self-esteem
- Work on social skills.
Techniques used in art therapy can include:
- Collage
- Coloring
- Doodling and scribbling
- Drawing
- Finger painting
- Painting
- Photography
- Sculpting
- Working with clay
Our Therapists
All our therapists are experienced and highly qualified professionals. We provide Individual, Family and Group Therapy. Our team specialises in the model of Theraplay® and have been successfully supporting families since 2005.
Our team accesses regular CPD with experts in their fields through our training company. Such as, DDP, Sensory attachment integration, MIM method D-EIS (Dyadic Emotional interaction Style) scoring and EMDR. As well as attending some of our most recent conferences and training events being; Trans and non-binary, Inside I’m Hurting and Respecting Biology.
jeanette ellis
dramatherapist, certified theraplay practitioner & ddp informed
Lisa smallwood
dramatherapist, SAI PRACTItioner & theraplay foundational practitioner
Becky wright
art therapist, life story practitioner
Victoria Bayes
Occupational Therapist, Post Graduate Certification in Sensory Integration
Pippa Bolger
Therapeutic Social Worker, Integrative Counsellor, Theraplay informed practitioner & DDP-informed practitioner
sophie mclatchy
play therapist, intermediate theraplay practitioner & ddp informed
Delphine spencer
ART PSYCHOTHERAPIST & ATTACHMENT FOCUS THERAPIST
Grace lane
certified theraplay practitioner, emdr practitioner & ddp informed
Beth sando
play therapy apprentice
Emily Cooper
certified theraplay practitioner, ddp informed practitioner
sue martin
Psychotherapist, supervisor & DDP Informed practitioner
Jo williams
certified theraplay practitioner, trainer & supervisor, dramatherapist
Kat Harding
integrative counsellor
Donna Gooding
systemic psychotherapist and EMDR Therapist
Our Therapy Suite
The Therapy suites are equipped with all the necessary equipment to provide a safe and engaging environment for the children and families to explore their therapy in a non contaminating space allowing for everyone to fully relax.
We have suites based in Corby, Market Harborough, Leicester, Northampton and Milton Keynes allowing a diverse service area.
