Elizabeth Nelson (She/Her)

My Approach to Helping

As a therapist, I seek to foster healing in action, play, imagination, wholeness, meaning making, connection, courage, authenticity, a sense of belonging, transformation, agency and resilience in the lives of the individuals I work with. My work is grounded in attachment, trauma informed, and experiential theoretical orientations and I strive to practice as an anti-oppressive/anti-racist clinician. Art therapy is a powerful, experiential, expressive arts therapy that helps address that which is difficult to put words to. It focuses not necessarily on the art product, but rather using art in the process of therapy as a lens to access parts of the brain, body and psyche that talk therapy may not fully reach. Humanity has turned to various types of art for millennia to heal, long before therapists in the modern sense existed, and this type of therapy engages in this phenomenon.

My Values as a Therapist

I have made a commitment examine all the privileged and marginalized identities I inhabit, my biases and how I have been conditioned as a white, U.S. born, cisgender, queer woman. I actively take steps to examine and dismantle oppression within myself, within all the ways in which I practice therapy, and within the structural systems in which we all exist; practicing reconciliation when I make mistakes and being in relationship with communities that restore and liberate us all so that we can collectively thrive. I seek ongoing professional education on anti-oppression/anti-racism, participate in ongoing consultation with a Black therapist/anti-oppression consultant and also consult regularly with other licensed art therapy colleagues. I strive to make space in therapy to examine the impact of my clients' social locations and the impact of the systems we are all apart of, knowing this brings a broader and more complete picture in regards to how we all show up in the world.