Olivia Marsden

Connecting through creative communication to encourage healing and wellbeing.

I help people with

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

Arts Therapy for Healing & Growth

Arts therapy uses creativity within therapy to create connection through meaning-making and embodied expression which allows space for healing and growth. By utilizing creative tools and sensory, symbolic processes to drop into our inner lives, we can give form to experiences and emotions that can be difficult to put words to.

Arts Therapy Helps People To:

• Share experiences and express feelings that may be difficult to talk about
• Explore and use their imagination and creativity to find new ways of responding to and understanding their experiences
• Process challenging experiences in a way that isn’t revisiting harm
• Develop personal resources and coping skills
• Reduce stress and anxiety
• Be compassionate towards themselves and increase self-confidence and resiliency

It’s important to know that you don’t have to be ‘good at art’ to engage with arts therapy, no prior art experience is needed. The focus is on what comes into being within the creative process and therapeutic relationship.

I will not be making any diagnoses or interpretations based on the art that you make and instead I will guide and hold space for you to explore, pause, reflect, be curious and connect to your own innate wisdom.

Therapy Approach

I am passionate about using creativity to enhance wellbeing using a mindful, client-centered, strengths-based and trauma-informed approach.

I collaboratively work with clients utilizing mindfulness through visual arts making, clay, writing, visualization, collage, story-telling, play and movement alongside the following theoretical frameworks and models dependent on client needs:
Arts psychotherapy, Narrative therapy, Focusing-Oriented Arts Therapy, Attachment theory, Positive psychology, Nature-based arts therapy, ACT, CBT, DBT, Somatic experiencing, Sensorimotor psychotherapy, Te whare tapa whā.

Counselling Experience

I have worked within a range of communities over the past 8 years, facilitating individual therapy, group therapy and creative community workshops.

• Community mental health group & individual therapy
• ACC Sensitive Claims individual therapy
• Intellectual disability individual therapy within residential care
• Dementia-care therapy groups
• Individual and group therapy in primary, intermediate, secondary schools
• Individual therapy with tertiary students within university counselling team
• Corrections group therapy
• Palliative care wellbeing group therapy
• Grief, loss & bereavement therapy with children & adolescents
• Expressive well-being group therapy for children within the community