Aspire Therapy Team

What’s on offer?

The Aspire Therapy Team is made up of people with different experiences and ways of working. Some of us work with people one to one, while others can offer group work, or work with you alongside family and people important to you.

Therapy can happen in person at Aspire, at your home or online.

Our priorities are to be flexible, collaborative and make sure that therapy is meaningful to you.

Therapy can sometimes help if you:

• Have worrying thoughts that you struggle to ignore
• Hear voices which are difficult for you, or have other distressing visual or sensory experiences
• Feel you must carry out certain behaviours to stay safe, or have ways of coping which cause you distress
• Have thoughts that others might harm you or feelings of being unsafe
• Feel sad, alone or anxious
• Have difficulty managing your moods
• Have been through something difficult and it is affecting you
• Have had difficult life events or experienced trauma
• Struggle with sleep
• Want to understand more about who you are
• Want to understand your relationships better

Your care coordinator will speak to you about Therapeutic support in aspire and a network meeting with a therapist can be arranged to discuss all the different therapy options available

Types of therapy available with Aspire

Individual talking therapy

Individual therapy can look different depending on your needs, goals and hopes.

In therapy you and a member of the therapy team can work together to try and make sense of your experiences and think about how they affect your day-to-day lives.

We have therapists who offer a range of approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT).

Some approaches focus more on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours we have, helping to make sense of these and learning skills that can help you day to day.

Other approaches may focus more on our relationships, understanding our life history or approaches such as building self-compassion.

Systemic or Family Therapy

Working with the people close to you (a systemic approach).

We welcome family, friends, and others close to you to be part of your support with aspire. Broadly speaking we might think of this as a systemic approach to a person’s care. Working systemically means we are interested in the ‘system’ around a person including their relationships, their wider communities, as well as other parts of their identities such as gender, race, faith and culture.

A systemic approach might involve inviting your family/friends or people from your community to some meetings with you (known as a network meeting) or deciding to have some longer-term therapy sessions together.

This approach is about working together to explore possibilities and ideas about what might help and being open to hearing from you and those close to you about what’s important to discuss. We would always attempt to avoid blame and will never assume how any relationships ‘should be’, respecting that every family is unique.

Dramatherapy and Creative therapies

Explore your feelings in a creative way with dramatherapy — through movement, art, objects, and sound, at your own pace.

Dramatherapy prioritises relaxation, personal empowerment, and discovery.

Often people feel worried that Dramatherapy will mean performing on a stage or acting. This is not true. Drama and Creative Therapies offer you a unique chance to step away from words for a while; for you to manage your life challenges (present, past, and future) without having to speak about them directly.

Using art materials, games, creative objects, music, and sound is invited.

Alongside movement, touch, stories, and role play.

Whatever we do will always be led by your choice.

These activities support people to express themselves, understand themselves better and hopefully have some fun along the way.

Drama and Creative Therapies are offered one to one, with a key family member or in small groups.

What is dramatherapy?

Dramatherapy is a holistic approach to recovery and wellbeing where entertaining ways of relaxing, discovering and (re)connecting are offered through exploration of creative objects, movement and meditation and role play (think “let’s pretend” or “fake it ‘til you make it”) to help you express your feelings, work with your difficulties and consider your hopes for the future.

You can choose to work in many different ways: with art, sound, music, the body and with the written or spoken word to express what is happening for you in a comfortable, informal space.

How does it work?

Dramatherapy activities give you the key to understanding your experiences at a pace that is manageable for you because you are in control of each session.

Example activities

• Grounding activities and meditations
• Exploring movement
• Using objects to explore and express your experiences
• Mapping your world and the people in it

You control:

• How long each session lasts
• How often we meet
• Who comes to the session
• What activities are included in the session
• How much you take part in the session
• You may choose to keep everything private and not talk at all

How do I access Drama Therapy?

Your care coordinator will speak to you about therapeutic support in aspire and a network meeting with a therapist can be arranged to discuss all the different therapy options available including Drama therapy. You can also speak to your Care Coordinator or a member of the aspire team about arranging a taster session with Ursula, the Aspire Drama therapist.