Elizabeth Nelson

As a therapist, I work to foster healing in action, play, spontaneity, experience, humor, wholeness, imagination, meaning making, connection, courage, authenticity, belonging, transformation, agency, and resilience in the lives of the individuals I work with. 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 intuitively 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. I conduct both individual and group counseling and art therapy for ages 11-24. Art may include mask making, printmaking, doll making, shadow boxes, needle felting, sewing, weaving, quilting, collage (including fabric collage), altered books, environmental art, poetry (including visual poetry), creative writing, sculpting, painting, drawing, photography, theatre and a few other surprises! I also enjoy playing DJ for art making, if clients are so inclined. I love working with teenagers and young adults and enjoy helping families connect and improve their relationships. I rely on attachment, trauma informed, experiential, anti-racist/anti-oppressive orientations, but draw from other orientations as the need arises. I have made a personal and professional commitment to engage in ongoing education on anti-racism/anti-oppression, examining my biases and how I have been conditioned as a white, cisgender, U.S. born, queer woman. This involves the commitment to continually and actively take steps to examine and dismantle oppression within myself, all the ways in which I practice therapy, the therapy space, and the structural systems in which we all exist; practicing reconciliation when I make mistakes and creating and contributing to spaces that liberate and restore us all so that we can collectively thrive. I strive to make space in therapy to examine the impact of my and my clients' social locations and the impact of the systems we are all a part of, knowing this brings a broader and more complete picture in regards to how we all show up in the world. I also have two bunnies, Walter and Caramel. Walter likes to make surprise appearances in therapy looking dapper in a bow tie, but Caramel has stage fright and prefers to remain incognito.