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My professional background

Michelle Wolsky Expressive Arts Therapy

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Individual Therapy

I provide expressive arts therapy for individuals who are struggling with daily functioning, building and maintaining relationships, attachment development, and maintaining healthy boundaries. I work with children, teens, and young adults who have experienced past trauma and/or who are neurodiverse.

Areas of Focus

  • Post-traumatic Stress (past traumas of abuse, neglect, and/or abandonment)
  • Neurodiversity (ADHD, Autism, Traumatic Brain Injury, and developmental disabilities)
  • Attachment development
  • Social skills
  • Acceptance and commitment
  • Self esteem
  • Issues of young adulthood
  • Adjustments and life transitions
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Grief and loss

Trauma

Trauma is the response that a child experiences from an event in their lives that they find to be threatening or harmful, such as abuse, neglect, abandonment, witnessing violence, accidents, or illness. Trauma can affect one’s reasoning skills, memory, and the way they understand and relate to self, others, and the world around them. Trauma effects the nervous system which can cause symptoms of anxiety, aggression, agitation, inattention, disinterest, and indifference. Trauma triggers can create ongoing stress in one’s body, even if there is no real threat, causing the nervous system to be repeatedly reactivated. I help youth to understand that their reactions to trauma are normal and that there’s nothing wrong with their bodies or their brains. I support youth in working to decrease trauma related arousal and to restore confidence in their bodies, by offering repetitive sensory experiences such as finger painting, coloring mandalas, mosaic, drumming, and dance/movement.

It can be difficult to express experiences of trauma with only words, especially for youth. However, the expressive arts will provide your child with a new language to express these memories with, allowing them to reframe their story, and to look at life with new meaning. The expressive arts offer a safe container and help to provide distance from the trauma, allowing the child to experience a balance of enjoyment along with the workings of healing.

Neurodiversity

The term neurodiverse describes people whose brain differences affect how their brain works. That means they have different strengths and challenges from people whose brains that don’t have these differences. The possible differences include Autism, ADHD, Asperger’s, traumatic brain injury, and learning disabilities. The possible strengths include better memory, being able to mentally picture three-dimensional (3D) objects easily, the ability to solve complex mathematical calculations in their head, and many more.

When working with individuals who are neurodiverse, I emphasize their strengths not their deficits. I will challenge and empower the individual to do different things, without pushing them into sensory overload, to promote independent living skills and social skills. The expressive arts can enhance communication skills, helping the individual to build stronger relationships and to see other people’s perspectives.

How Therapy Works

The Architecture of a Session

Done with flexibility, depending on the client and their needs

Counseling Room

  • Build rapport- ritual check-in
  • What’s troubling them or what goal are they working on?
  • Summarize the problem and/or goal
  • What would be acceptable or meaningful for them to leave with?

Art Studio

  • Warm up the senses with art materials or a visualization
  • Art activity – make something
  • Talk about the work, in keeping with the art itself
  • What showed up? What happened in an artful way?
  • What was difficult? How did you solve your art problems?

Harvesting

  • How did solving your art problems give you a resource in how you solve your life problem/goal?
  • How do these things prepare you for dealing with your problem/goal in life?
  • Person goes back to life world, out of their sacred protective space, back into ordinary life.

Fees for Expressive Arts Therapy Sessions

$90 per 60 min. session

$135 per 90 min. session

$180 per 120 min. session

I accept cash, card, check, or flexible spending accounts for payment.

Insurance

I do not currently accept insurance.

How do I discover what my insurance will cover?

To find out what your insurance may cover, contact your insurance, and ask if you have out-of-network mental health coverage for expressive arts therapy.

Cancellation Policy

To cancel a scheduled therapy session a minimum of 24 hours in advance of your session is required. If prior and timely notification is not given, you will be charged the full session fee for the missed session.

Let’s Talk!

Your first 30 minute phone consultation is free.

Schedule a Consultation Today

Schedule an introductory phone call, where you can share about what’s going on for you and we can explore how I can help.