Expressive Arts Therapists in Wells River, VT

I help children, teenagers, and adults to navigate the challenges of life through cultivating greater inner awareness, presence, and compassion. My clinical experience is in working with clients who are facing challenges such as anxiety, depression, trauma, life transitions and interpersonal issues. My therapeutic approach treats you, the client, as the expert on your own inner experiences, and empowers you to create solutions for areas of your life that are not working.

My integrative approach to psychotherapy draws upon expressive arts practices, mind-body connection principles, humanistic and psychodynamic theories, and the belief in the wisdom, resourcefulness and resiliency that exists within each of us.

Interested in soul-making with personal agency versus coping with dysfunctional realities? The depth lens can be used by those experiencing non-ordinary states of reality, amplified emotions, mania, anxiety, trauma presentations, & a desire to understand your psychological patterns better or create new ones. Dr. Annie facilitates a decolonization approach to tend psyche, wherein we co-create a self-care system through your cultural lenses to teach you how to keep your own council. The psyche-soma models employed include Jungian, Archetypal, Mindfulness-Based, Eco-Psychological, Wisdom Traditions, & Expressive Arts modalities.

What a divine and complex person you are; both stunningly unique and profoundly woven in relationship to all others. For you, I offer the healing arts, which can be playful and light-hearted while being equally capable of offering safe passage through some of the richest, or most difficult experiences in our lives. Some for which, we can be left without words. May you then instead be drawn in, danced out, courted, felt, and moved. May the song of your life be sung in chorus, and the beat of your heart danced with wild surrender.

I am currently making a waitlist for new clients! Welcome to Joyful Otter Therapy. I offer in-person and telehealth counseling and psychotherapy services for children, adolescents, adults and families, ages 4 and up. Through a holistic approach, I strive to provide a safe and accessible environment to explore your strengths and needs, and develop goals that fit your current situation. Using evidence-based therapy, such as cognitive behavioral (CBT), mindfulness-based, and play therapy, I incorporate expressive arts to allow for more accessible treatment.

I offer a welcoming, compassionate, and non-judgmental space to share your story. Sometimes, problems we face — whether they come with a diagnosis or not — may be overwhelming, debilitating, paralyzing, unhealthy, or destructive to ourselves or our relationships. I work collaboratively to help people deconstruct and free themselves from the grip of problems that may be overwhelming and oppressive and move toward preferred ways of living and thriving.

Therapy can help break old patterns and habits which can stand in the way of forming new opportunities or relationships. I have been practicing as a counselor in Vermont for fourteen years, working with children, adolescents, and families. I am also trained as a crisis clinician. I have worked closely with families and teens experiencing depression, suicidal ideation, trauma, anxiety, family conflict and school challenges.

Welcome! I am Shelley Jackson and am looking forward to meeting you. I have over 20 years counseling experience working with children and adults. I believe in the inherent good in all people and want to help you live a life worth living. I treat my clients, whether adults or children, with deep respect and offer you a safe place in which to process your problems. I offer you my unconditional positive regard and genuineness as a person. I believe our relationship is the most important part of counseling and to that end I bring 100% of myself into our sessions.

It takes courage to reckon with some of the most private, honest, scary, and hopeful places within you. Effective support during these times can be transformational. You may want to discover new ways of being in the world, your skin, and your life that feel authentic, and alive. Or, you may be wanting relief from painful relationship patterns, anger, grief, fear, self-criticism, “stuckness” or addiction. My clients often find my approach feels both comfortable and challenging, and facilitates greater self-love and empowerment. I hold a license in Mental Health Counseling, CAGS in Expressive Arts, and am IFS trained.

As a Solution Focused Therapist, I help my clients find the patterns in their lives that have hindered their ability to imagine and achieve the life they desire. I offer many different approaches, including Traditional Talk Therapy using Solution Focus and CBT, as well as more interactive creative approaches, including Expressive Arts Therapies. My style is open and interactive as I guide and educate clients to explore new options for responding (not reacting) to life's challenges.

My purpose is to help my clients live their lives to their fullest, being their most authentic selves. I believe that connection, understanding, and discovery are the foundation of a growth mindset that can activate all of us into more skilled navigation of our most challenging waters. I celebrate healing, joy, peace, and expression.

The goals of my practice are to support the development of self-compassion, reduce suffering and increase the capacity for a meaningful life. I am a Vermont Rostered Master of Psychology specializing in the Expressive Arts Therapies. I earned my degree at Goddard College and completed my clinical internship with a community mental health agency in Vermont, The Clara Martin Center. Prior to earning my degree, I worked for mental health agencies in New England and the Midwest, facilitating Wellness programming and therapeutic farming with young adults at alternative schools in Detroit, Michigan and Western Massachusetts.

Throughout our therapeutic work together, we may explore patterns of thoughts and feelings derived from your family of origin that impacts your current life and/or relationships. Within the structure and support of our professional relationship, these patterns become more apparent and conscious, and are thus more easily understood and changed. My role is to collaborate with you to achieve a greater awareness of yourself, to develop more effective behavioral patterns and ultimately reduce undesirable or troubling emotions and interpersonal conflicts.

I see a state of imbalance in the world that affects all beings and brings out our collective and individual defenses. These intersect with trauma, relationship issues, fear, anxiety, grief, and depression to create patterns of disharmony within our lives and our dynamics with others. Whatever brings you to therapy, I believe that therapy can help ease the burden. I see therapy as a process of co-creatively and compassionately tending to threads of discord that have become intransigent, freeing new pathways of thinking, feeling, and being. With time and attention, therapy can help cultivate and strengthen an inner balance.

Each life is sacred and all life deserves freedom, happiness, abundance, and connection. Yet through the patterning of wounding, we so often harm ourselves or others through our relation to these unmet needs. Past narratives live on into our present lives through the manifestations of anxiety, depression, addiction, poor or abusive relationships, and...the list goes on. But all wounds can heal if given the proper attention and time.

Welcome! I am glad you were able to find this page, as asking for help can be very difficult. I believe in the beauty, the truth, and the wonderful potential existing in each and everyone of us. I am committed to foster this source, in order to help your beautiful self find its proper place, role, and meaning in life. In my practice I focus on multiple life and mental health challenges with a strong emphasis on solid evidence-based science, philosophy, spirituality, and religion (I am open and supportive of all backgrounds), as well as integrative, empathetic, and personalized approaches to healthcare.

Individuals of all gender, sexual, and racial identities are welcome at my practice! I believe in the importance of providing a safe and affirming space for individuals to feel curious about and explore themselves, their experiences, and their relationships. I also hope to encourage folks to feel curious about what they are currently holding onto that no longer serves them. I always hope to act as a fellow traveler with folks on their journeys to find and create meaning. I also believe in the importance of empowerment and a positive therapeutic relationship.

I bring 30+ years of experience working with adults and couples of all ages and life stages, with a special interest in meeting with people in the creative arts, as i am a musician as wll as a psychologist. I can also consult with parents of children with special needs regarding the support available at school. I meet either in person at my office in my home or in a virtual platform, and am a provider for a number of insurance companies. I generally employ an electic approach, and can incorporate CBT, insight, and practical ways of supporting people. I have some appointment times available.

I have been a substance abuse and mental health clinician for 19 years. I have worked in residential, intensive outpatient, outpatient, medically assisted therapy, and school settings providing prevention, intervention, assessment, treatment, and referral services. I have experience working with children, adolescents, and adults in group and individual sessions providing both education and therapy. I am qualified to provide license reinstatement counseling for the State of Vermont.