“People with Learning Disabilities are often dismissed, intellect holding such veneration in our society, and yet these people seemed emotionally intelligent, more aware of their emotions and the emotional state of others, and how to express this in the subtlest of ways”

“Killing monsters is powerful stuff. Swords, guns, light sabres, death pits, and magic rings have all found their way into my Art Therapy sessions … the acting out of violence in play seems to form a rite of passage, like ‘make-believe violence’ in comic books”

“Now after several years working as a therapist I struggle with an idea of hope that for some appears more about wishful thinking, or the imposition of an expectation upon a client that we can wish for that may never happen, as though we can hope our clients lives into existence”

“In the quiet of the therapeutic space I find much privilege in experiencing the stories of my clients, painful and unnerving as this can be for both of us. At times I tug and pull on information, teasing it out, at others I am guiding, enclosing, ‘making safe’ as waves of information are thrown around the room in all colours and all materials. We are weaving the stories, co-creating”

“A friend recently asked me whether there is such a thing as collective art therapy. In response I talk about studio sessions, large groups where I work with each client for a short time, but it’s clear he’s talking about something less organised, with no therapist, but a gathering of people involved in creative activity that might intuitively have some therapeutic benefit for all. We talk about group dynamics. It reminds me of Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’, the collective mind figuring out and arranging the gathered people by type based on our primordial experience and then we navigate our paths in and around one another accordingly”

“I sense that good therapists have always been able to work with the grey areas; the space between art and therapy, yet over the years of my development as a therapist I have often felt anxious that my clinical work does not appear to others as ‘just art’, and that somehow I need to use long psychological language to differentiate myself. “

“Like any of us that work for state funded institutions like the Health Service I find it hard to remove myself from the apparent aims of enabling a healthy, but more obedient, working and hassle free population; curing people who become aggressive and take up valuable time and resources. I try to find the path that is best for my client, but I often find myself listening to the pleas of families and carers to fix people, and of course there in my own inner voice aswell, so desperate to help.

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“for families that have spent their adult lives trying to stay alive amidst the challenges of a child with cognitive disabilities then thinking about what has always been in the background, their own mortality and that impact on care for their child appears overwhelming; an ending understandably to be avoided at all costs“

“I consider what my client might be saying to their parent, or to me by this subtle yet apparently profound difference in behaviour; one for home, one for the therapy room. I am pleased that my client has found a way of communicating, but mixed with a sadness for the parent who has carefully brought up a child with a disability only now to see them act with the subtlest of statements of independence, or perhaps ambivalence.”

“In this semi quiet my thoughts fly around, spinning in my head and indeed in the therapy room like snow flakes caught silently in a Winter storm, all bright, attractive, floating and then massing into layers of depth as they fall. Layers that can flow into overwhelming emotions. Silence is not easy. Holding onto ourselves, whilst holding our clients is the work of such small transactional moments“