"Look into nature, then you will understand everything better."
Albert Einstein
Hello there, I'm Susie, whatever has brought you to my website ... I offer you a warm welcome.
I provide compassionate supportive therapy that meets you wherever you are in your journey. You might be navigating:
- A quiet emotional weight that's difficult to name, low mood, or a feeling of lack that you cannot quite define;
- Feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, or worried about burning out;
- Chronic pain or a physical illness, such as ME/CFS;
- Trauma or stress that is rooted in your childhood and impacting your adult life.
You are in the right place if you are looking for: new insight; relief from intrusive thoughts or physical / emotional distress; support for your nervous system or in finding your way through current difficulties, or early life trauma from someone who knows this terrain; or if you're wanting a dynamic ally to support you in creating positive change for yourself.
Keep scrolling down for lots of information about how I work and what I offer.
Wild and Wise
Where ancient wisdom meets modern science: grounding your healing journey in the restorative power of nature and the expressive arts.
Targeted therapies for sufferers of stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and chronic physical illnesses.
With HCPC registered Arts Therapist,
Susie Thompson
Susie has an MA in Dramatherapy and is also qualified in Environmental Arts Therapy (EAT). Dramatherapy is a unique form of psychotherapy in which creativity, play, movement, voice, storytelling, dramatisation, improvisation and the creative arts are used alongside talking, to enable therapeutic clients to access more of themselves and to enable and support dynamic change.
In addition, EAT generally takes place outside in the natural world. It can involve using any of the above, in addition to clients creating art using natural, found materials. This therapeutic art-making is with a purpose to enable what is held inside one to be externalised, explored and transformed, to help create positive change. The landscape, the time of year, the weather, etc all inform the client's therapeutic work.
Your Needs
We start where you are now
I support two distinct needs:
1: Stress, Anxiety, depression, and Overwhelm
2: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
(If Arts Therapies appeal to you but your needs are not described here, you are welcome to get in touch to explore whether I might be able to support you.).
The Gift
When we are stressed and overwhelmed, or depressed and shut down, the many gifts we have that might help us are harder to see and to access.
The Gift explores what is difficult about your current context in a safe space. We work to down-regulate your stress response, to calm your anxiety, and establish equilibrium for yourself. The natural world is proven to have a positive effect on stress. In that environment we employ methods to help you improve your stress activation, such as: calming metaphors that have been shown to improve your nervous system state; finding resources and glimmers to help you build a healthier internal environment; and a range of arts therapies and somatic (embodied) practices to help you explore, release, understand, or create the change you desire. You will also learn helpful practices to use back out in your everyday life.
The Two Sisters
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a serious, complex, and debilitating physical, multi-system illness. It fundamentally impacts every aspect of a person's life. Up to ninety percent of those diagnosed are women and so this therapy is designed for women. As there is currently no cure and little in the way of treatment offered through the NHS, navigating this illness can feel deeply isolating - a reality I understand intimately, having lived with ME/CFS myself since 2012.
In 2020 I had a therapeutic case study published. It outlines how I helped a client to regain a significant amount of her energy and to reduce her symptoms and pain, in a lasting way. I use what I learned from that therapeutic work, every day, to feel better myself. I now offer this to other women with this illness.
I call my ME/CFS therapy 'The Two Sisters'. It is an Arts Therapy approach that is based on both modern trauma-informed somatic practices and an ancient myth involving two sisters. This has proven to be an effective guide to navigating the terrain of this illness in a gentle way. You can read more about it by clicking on More Detail below.
What does the therapy involve?
My practice is based outside in the natural world, giving you instant access to all the well researched benefits to your health and mental wellbeing that this provides.
When we step outside and create, we move past just talking about your pain and begin moving through it. Nature helps soothe your nervous system so your body can feel safe, while art gently bypasses your rational defences, giving a voice to the deep, wordless parts of your story.
You do not need any artistic ability or experience to benefit from this. We call it art, but it's really about creating a symbolic expression of your internal world so you can see it differently. For example, you might find a tree that has fallen but is still flowering, mirroring your own resilience. Or you might make a nest from a pile of sticks to symbolise a safe space, and place stones inside it to represent your grief. This supports you to name and process your grief, but also to interact with it physically, safely contain it, and claim agency in it. This external exploration, in turn, creates the internal changes we are seeking.
How I work
We can work in any gentle natural space - a park, a wood, a riverbank, or a coastline. For those managing physical illness or with limited mobility, I can adapt sessions to your own garden. The natural world acts as a profound partner in our sessions, often offering meaningful experiences or synchronicities that support your exploration.
What to expect:
Our sessions follow a reliable, safe structure:
- Check-in: We talk, ground ourselves, and establish your resources.
- Creative Exploration: We actively and safely explore what you are bringing, in partnership with the natural world.
- Reflection: We harvest any new insights and ground and resource you before ending the session.
Please note: I am trained to maintain your clinical privacy and confidentiality while working outdoors.
Healing
No one can promise you healing. Meaningful change and a better quality of life are what we aim towards. Nature-based Environmental Arts Therapy treats your whole person to help you:
- Bypass verbal blocks to access complex emotions that are difficult to articulate.
- Create safe emotional distance using projection and metaphor so heavy feelings feel manageable to explore and express.
- Engage mind and body through somatic awareness to gently release stored physical tension and support beneficial nervous system regulation.
- Practice new boundaries and behaviours safely in a creative space, supporting your long-term personal growth.
Our creative therapeutic exploration is tailored to you and what you need.
What makes it different from talk therapy is that I can help you to widen the conversation with yourself to include what is held in your body, along with your thoughts and feelings. And to tap into your deep creativity for its endless ability to reveal what is hidden, along with new ways to move forward.
Traditional talk therapy can be life-changing. However, some people find they talk endlessly and understand their issues intellectually, yet nothing feels different inside. From a neurobiological standpoint, this is because trauma, deep emotions and behavioural survival patterns are stored in the non-verbal, instinctual parts of the brain and body. Dynamic, creative therapy has been proven to more easily access this (read Bessel Van der Kolk's book 'The Body Keeps the Score' if you would like to know more about the evidence for this.
More than just words
Client Quotes
About me
“Susie, I have appreciated the work we did and how much you yourself, your personal warmth, your skills and care have meant to me, how much you’ve helped me, and how life-enhancing your work is.”
“I thought that change took a long time. This has shown me it doesn’t have to.”
About CFS/ME
“I was worried at the beginning that I’d be too tired to continue after a while. But then I realised I could bring my tiredness to it, and that’s what it was all about. I was able to be more real. I didn’t need to separate how I’m feeling from how I’m acting. I could bring my knackeredness and work from that point. And now I’m transferring that into my life outside the therapy.”
“My recovery time after activity is much quicker.”
About Arts Therapies
"It wouldn’t have been the same if we hadn’t been in nature. There was something very powerful about being there, and us being in amongst it and able to interact with it. The physicality of it was important as well as the metaphor. The myth connects us with the universality of everything in nature as well. It felt important being physically in that environment."
Quotes are anonymised to protect client confidentiality, and shared with kind permission.
“The difference between psychotherapy and dramatherapy is the difference
between studying the territory and getting out and experiencing it.
Psychotherapy is like reading a map. Dramatherapy is going through the terrain.”
Get in touch
E-mail: susie@wildandwise.co.uk
Finding the right therapist is important.
I offer a 'no strings' 30 minute introductory call or online meet to discuss and evaluate your needs, to establish if we are a good fit and if the approach I offer is right for you. You can complete the form to the right, or contact me directly by email to arrange this.