Art Therapy

Art therapy for addiction and eating disorder recovery in Bermondsey

Recovery from addiction or an eating disorder is not a linear process, and it does not always move through speech. There are parts of the experience that resist verbal articulation: the physical memory of a craving, the shame that has no clear beginning, the patterns that feel known and yet somehow out of reach. Art psychotherapy creates a different kind of access to that material.

Working with image, material and creative process, it externalises what is internal, making it available to examination in a way that talk alone sometimes cannot.

How art therapy supports recovery

In addiction recovery, art therapy addresses the emotional and psychological layers that substance use has been managing. The image that emerges in a session is not decorative. It is a communication from the part of the self that the addiction has been containing. Working with that image over time is part of understanding what the compulsion has been doing, and what else might be possible.

In eating disorder recovery, the body image distortions and the specific quality of self-relationship that drive restrictive or compulsive eating patterns often resist direct verbal challenge. Art psychotherapy offers a way of approaching those patterns from a different angle, through the image, through the process of making, through the slow accretion of a different relationship to self-expression.

What sessions involve

Art therapy sessions at the Bermondsey practice are 50 minutes. A range of materials is available, paint, charcoal, clay, collage, pencil. No artistic experience is needed and none is expected. The work is not about producing something aesthetically accomplished. It is about producing something true.

Art therapy at this practice is used as part of a broader integrative treatment approach, alongside individual psychotherapy and (where relevant) EMDR.

Why this work happens in Bermondsey

Bermondsey has long been one of London’s making places, and the practice’s art therapy room sits comfortably in that tradition. Art psychotherapy here is clinical work, led by a trained art psychotherapist with an MA in Adult Integrative Art Psychotherapy, and it is particularly suited to recovery work where words alone have stopped reaching the problem. Clients come from across South East London.

Getting started

An initial consultation at the Bermondsey practice is the appropriate first step. It is a conversation about what has brought you here and whether this approach feels right for your particular situation.