Naomi Pears-Scown

Emphasising the creative process over the end product.
Compassion, self-expression, and reflection as tools for healing.
This is a space for you to breathe and be.
Arts therapy sessions are held in my beautiful, bush-surrounded studio in Orewa.

Areas of Special Interest

• Anxiety
• Body image & eating disorders
• Depression
• Disability
• Grief
• Identity
• Mental Health
• Personal Development
• PTSD
• Self esteem
• Self harm
• Sexual abuse
• Stress
• Trauma

Counselling/Therapy Services

You might begin a session knowing exactly what you’d like to work with and talk about, or you might not. You might have an idea or issue that you’d like to explore, or maybe you don’t. It might have taken all the energy you have to just show up. However you arrive, I’m here with you, to guide and collaborate and hold this space for you. I will not be making any diagnoses or interpretations based on the art that you make, or how you make it. This is a space and opportunity for you to explore, pause, reflect, be curious, and to make your own meaning of what might come up. Our time together is confidential, respectful, and collaborative.

Arts Therapy is for people who would like to use creativity, along with other tools, to increase their ability to cope with challenges. Sometimes people enter Arts Therapy when traditional talk-based therapies have not worked for them, or when they want to explore their creativity as a tool for healing in their lives. Feedback from clients I have worked with have found my approach helpful in relaxing them and helping them feel grounded, making them feel safe in their bodies, giving them space to process their pain and trauma, and engaging them in an activity that is both fun and freeing.

Counselling/Therapy Approach

I am passionate about supporting people to access their innate creativity and improve their wellbeing. My personalised approach is trauma-informed, strengths-based, mindful, and person-centred. My style and personality is gentle, sensitive, grounded, and compassionate.

I like to work in a client-led way, and provide prompts and materials as a starting point to help anchor clients and honour their experiences. I implement a broad range of interventions that integrate several therapeutic areas at the same time such as visual arts making, writing, mindfulness, sensory work, storytelling, talking, play-therapy, movement, and mindfulness.

Background and Experience

I have worked with a range of individuals over the past 8 years, facilitating individual therapy, weekly arts therapy groups, creative workshops and self-development groups.

• Sexual Violence sector providing ACC Sensitive Claims therapy
• Individual therapy to children, adolescents and young adults
• Individual and group therapy in primary, intermediate, and secondary schools
• Oranga Tamariki working with children in care
• Dementia and hospital groups for the elderly
• Community and residential mental health group work
• Intellectual Disability group work