Adults
Are you suffering from anxiety, stress, burnout, panic attacks, anger, depression, or lethargy?
Or physical symptoms such as migraines, digestive issues, poor sleep, or fatigue?
Do you have difficult relationships with friends, family or colleagues?
Do you have unresolved childhood trauma or life experiences that overwhelm you?
Thank you for visiting my website. My name is Karen Wilson and I am an Art Psychotherapist and Somatic Experiencing® practitioner. In my work I have seen first-hand the distress caused by stress, overwhelm and unresolved trauma and it is my aim to help you make lasting change that empowers you in everyday life.
How can I help?
Understanding that we are ‘designed’ to respond to stressors by experiencing physical symptoms, sensations, emotions and feelings can be such a relief to hear. We can then understand that there isn’t something wrong with us psychologically, we are not broken, but we are being given important physiological cues and symptoms to notice and address. This isn’t a one size fits all approach. Our genetics, life experiences and environment patterns us to respond to stress, overwhelm and trauma differently.
I can help you gain understanding and awareness into your symptoms. Initially this a more cognitive approach. I share a helpful understanding of nervous system physiology and then use tools to help gather an understanding of your patterns, thoughts, and behaviours. Clients value being listened to and accepted without judgment and frequently report a sense of lightness after their initial sessions. Often, the information we gather invites further work. We cannot always ’think’ our way out of our symptoms but we need to ‘feel’ into the sensations and physical cues to move through them and this is where Somatic Experiencing® and Art Psychotherapy sessions can help.
Using Somatic Experiencing® I can support you to gently and safely begin to focus on your body cues to address stress, overwhelm or trauma, and allow your body to tell its story at its own pace. You will learn skills you can apply in your everyday life, and gradually you may experience an increase in your capacity, resilience, curiosity and joy. The use of art images and/or art-making in Art Psychotherapy can help access unconscious thoughts and feelings and gain deeper understanding into relationships and experiences. The process of seeing or creating a picture that depicts how you might feel on the inside can lead to surprising insights and shifts
How to work with me
You can work with me in the following ways:
Understand your Nervous System sessions
Somatic Experiencing® sessions
Art therapy sessions
Understand your Nervous System
During these sessions you will not only discover how stress, overwhelm and trauma may be impacting your daily experience but how to create more capacity and joy, you will learn:
A helpful understanding of nervous system physiology.
Tools to help gather an understanding of your patterns, thoughts and behaviours.
To recognise what uniquely moves you between different nervous system states.
To identify resources to help build capacity and resilience.
How to develop more creativity, curiosity and joy.
Basic Somatic Experiencing® skills to track sensations in your body and build the capacity to settle or regulate yourself.
The sessions can be done in-person with me in my beautiful therapy room in Marylebone.
Understand your Nervous System can be a stand-alone course of sessions or provide a wonderful foundation to on-going therapy. Each session is 60-minutes.
Somatic Experiencing®
Somatic Experiencing® is a body-based therapy founded by Dr Peter Levine PhD, who observed that animals in the wild, though regularly threatened by predators, were rarely traumatised because they have the ability to ‘shake’ off the survival energy a chase would elicit. Through his extensive studies and research, Levine recognised the key for humans in resolving traumatic symptoms lies in our being able to mirror wild animals in this way, and to process the survival energy that remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and minds.
Trauma and feelings of overwhelm can keep us stuck in the past and what I love about SE is that we can work in the moment, that clients learn to focus on the ‘live’ cues of their body in the present without having to continually revisit the story of their trauma. I can support you to gently and safely begin to focus on your body cues to address stress, overwhelm or trauma, and allow your body to tell its story at its own pace.
The Understand your Nervous System sessions provide a good foundation to beginning somatic work, however, should you wish to begin Somatic Experiencing without completing this course I can help you develop an understanding of nervous system physiology. Throughout our initial sessions we will build a picture to learn, understand and respect how your nervous system is uniquely patterned which will provide an essential foundation for deeper work. SE basic skills will help you develop the ability to track and assess sensations in the body, begin to recognise your triggers that stress and overwhelm you and importantly identify resources that not only help build the capacity to return to a more functional, comfortable range, but can help you experience more creativity, curiosity and joy in your life.
While the focus will be on Somatic Experiencing® we can incorporate creativity and art images to support the work should you wish.
Sessions are held weekly and are 60 minutes in duration.
Art Psychotherapy
Art Psychotherapy uses art as the primary mode of expression, alongside talking with an art therapist. Art Psychotherapy is not about creating a perfect picture to frame, and there is no requirement to be good at art, it’s about the process of creating in itself that often brings up more unconscious information from which new thoughts, feelings, links, and understandings can emerge.
Art Psychotherapy allows you to take what you are experiencing on the ‘inside’ and put it into an image/artwork on the outside. Expressing these feelings and reflecting upon them with a therapist can develop a growing personal awareness, which can enable you to begin to let go of painful, troublesome or ingrained feelings and patterns from the past or present.
I believe the use of art materials in therapy is hugely beneficial. I can help clients who believe that they are not good at art to gently access their own creativity and build confidence in using art to express themselves. The sessions do not only have to involve traditional art, such as painting. Clients can bring in photos, collage, write, use poetry, or any creative medium they may choose. Additionally, focusing purely on the movement of brushes, splashes of colour, sensations of moulding clay can also help put you in touch with your senses and body, helping you feel more present and bringing about a greater sense of settling and wellness in your body.
Sessions are held weekly and are 50 minutes in duration.
Taking the first steps in reaching out takes courage. Sometimes making the first call or sending the initial email can feel like the biggest step. I aim to put you at ease as we begin this process. Please take a look at the Therapy pathway guide below to beginning therapy and please do contact me with any questions.
The therapy pathway
Initial inquiry
This is where you contact me to let me know you are interested in therapy; you may have looked at my bio or my website and already be getting a sense of my approach. At this early stage, when I acknowledge your message, I will let you know my availability for session times and offer you a Discovery Call.
Discovery Call
The Discovery Call is a thirty-minute free of charge Zoom call. It is an opportunity for us to check our locations and timings align, and then if they do, to learn a little more about my approach to therapy and for you to briefly outline the reasons that you are seeking support. Although it will only be a short call, there will also be time for you to ask me any questions that you may have. If you like what you hear and think we may be a good fit, we can book in The Initial Session.
The Initial Session
The Initial session is a space for you to ask more questions and to get a feel of whether you would like to go ahead with the further sessions. It is also a space for us to have a more in-depth conversation, as we gently explore some of your history, difficulties, strengths and hoped for outcomes.
Ongoing Sessions
If you decide you would like to begin therapy with me we will arrange a start date for ongoing sessions. At the beginning of our first session, we will take some time to discuss and sign the Therapy alliance and consent form, this is our contract to begin our work together. I will send a copy to you ahead of time should you wish to read it before our session.
In our ongoing sessions you can choose to focus on Understanding your Nervous System, Somatic Experiencing® or Art Psychotherapy sessions. Though you have the option to focus on one approach all approaches can inform our work to a lesser or greater degree. We will have regular reviews to ensure that the sessions and the space continue to meet your needs.