Elle Sweetman Therapies

14/06/2023

It was once a revolution to include the realm of the body in healing spaces dedicated to the mind. Perhaps the next threshold we step over in these spaces includes the natural world as integral to human wellbeing and promotes reciprocity (an obvious idea that isn't new or remotely my own. It's ancient).

~ E

08/06/2023

A few things. 1. I have loved this poem by Gertler for a decade and every time I revisit it, it throws a new reflection my way. Holy, holy - referring to our dark nights. So gracious. Would like to hear how it lands for you ...

2. Places are open for June's IN Depth Sunday gathering ~ I'm really looking forward to this one, as I'm quietly gathering snippets of local myths and beautiful prose, and will be sharing a nature-based inquiry I took out to Glen Nevis today. The intricate relationship between the human psyche and nature has never felt so amplified for me. And myth, poetry, prose - they gift us reflection, a common language and a capacity to face the reality of our world.

3. Enjoy these snaps from my trails - the first one was taken in Loch Ard, in the Trossachs NP. Some real LOTR energy, I was geeking out. The second pic is overlooking Fort William. I chose my own adventure for the descent and became comfortably lost - until I lost a toenail. Wild.

~ E

28/05/2023

Musings on orientating to wonder, to awe.

Pictured - John Russell's piece that held me in place for a good few minutes at the National Gallery yesterday. While I thought it would be Monet or Van Gogh that gripped me, it was this one. I promptly hunted down the postcard version in the gift store - I had the strong sense it needed to be revisited. Like a symbol or a dream.

I think humans are designed for wonder. I have an inkling that wonder is essential, like a particular vitamin - without it, we become deficient, fatigued, lacklustre. Last night as I lay awake with some killer jetlag I pondered the effect of loss of wonder, awe, curiosity on the individual & collective psyche ... in a world that can be so measured, hurried, reductionistic.

Do wonder, awe have a role in psychological health and healing? If so, how are we, how am I working to foster this connection?

Let it be clear, I'm not speaking about peak experiences but rather, an orientation to a kind of presence that is worked regularly. Perhaps wonder is really about kindling relationship - a sensate reciprocity between ourselves and the world.

As I gazed at this piece of art, I was simultaneously humbled and expanded. Searingly present and altered. Grounded and cracked open. This is some kind of medicine, that I know.

~ E

10/05/2023

Update ~ Friends, I'm at the pointy end of my departure 🛫 from the Sunshine Coast, which means taking my therapy practice solely online from May 18.

Just to inform ... I'll be working 3-4 days a week online from spaces across Scotland and beyond, armed with my expressive tools and yep, I'm packing symbols too. IN Depth Sundays will continue throughout my sojourn, and I look forward to connecting with you there 🌀 I'm also in continuing education in depth-based psychology, and excited to bringing more of this to the forefront of what I share.

The Sunshine Coast has been my base for almost six years now. It's here that I built my business, continued my studies, held my workshops and spent many, many hours in session (the real privilege of my life). This particular piece of Australian coastline has held me through seasons of love, grief, growth, restoration. I've been supported, heavily. And the women I've come to know here ... stunning. Your friendship has buoyed me when I've needed it most and invited me to dig deep when essential.

I orientate myself through oceans. I grew up on the Southern Ocean, I've lived on the shores of the Pacific and now I'm destined to watch the waves of the North Atlantic. Scotland has been calling me for around 2 years. It's the land within my bones, my heritage and this point is what interests me the most ~ the ancestral pull. What resources, knowings, questions and resolutions live within me, on "home" soil?

Thankful for this land of the Gubbi Gubbi/Kabi Kabi for it's holding of me, for the Coast community for their love and for all of this stretchy, beautiful, wild becoming ...

E x

(I'll be sharing my travels and exploration via my email list, send me a DM with your email if you'd like to follow along).

01/04/2023

On becoming more of ourselves ~

These words from John Ashberry speak to me of reconciling with our parts. Inclusivity. Our evitable rumble with unknowns and making room for Mystery.

We come to therapeutic work for a myriad of reasons - to make sense of, uncover, reconcile, remember, to learn new approaches to our pains and troubles, to support relating and relationships.

And

What often surprises people is the very thing they felt needed fixing, removal or "letting go of" can be transformed - through curiosity and process - into an intelligent source of wisdom that provides the inquirer with the very means for their growth and change. The reconciliation resides within the wound.

The therapeutic process becomes much more nuanced when there's no distinct binary of good/bad but rather, what potential information is this experience/behaviour/pattern/expression holding for us?

A wholing approach is what I'm most interested in these days.

~ E

22/02/2023

Upcoming in-person events ~ The March Workshop Series.

Link 🔗 https://linktr.ee/ellesweetman

23/01/2023

Musings for 2023 ~

Below are a few recognitions I've happened upon, through my time sitting with humans in their vulnerability (a serious privilege). And being a vulnerable, complex human myself.

~ We don't make it to the shores of resolution without rumbling with grief - often numerous times. Grief is a necessary portal we all must walk through in any transition, if we are to fully inhabit our lives. Grief is gruelling and one of the wisest teachers I've ever come across. I've sourced much of my life from its depths.

~ Acceptance is not of land of absolutes - of static completeness, of material never to be revisited again. More so, acceptance is a quiet reclamation of personal power from a well-worn situation we no longer need to walk upon. It's the soft exhale of laying down our resistance to the facts that lie in front of us and caring for our hearts in the release.

~ We can be hurt, we can be disappointed, we can be angry AND still uphold another's dignity. Reducing another in order to feel right only feels good for the smallest of moments. Separating the human from the behaviour is compassionate adulting.

~ Relating is difficult. Maybe we weren't modelled healthy relationships, that happens to many. But if we are to have a fulfilled life, learning to relate and communicate well is one of the most valuable things we can put energy into. It's a practice, for all of us.

~ Very rarely is there a "right" or simple answer. Ruminating and continual problem solving tend to keep us distanced from the heart of the matter, conveniently. Attending to our emotions in the moment seems to be more important than trying to work out the why. That can happen later.

~ The psyche is a mysterious creature. Leave room for the Mystery.

25/10/2022

On Sand and Symbol Work ~

I find Sand and Symbol Work a difficult therapeutic modality to explain well ~ due to the fact it's experiential by nature. The most common misconception I hear is the belief that it's a therapeutic intervention for children (note - it's appropriate across the lifespan).

Through choosing symbols that have a charge, expression, familiarity or intrigue for us, and configuring them in the sand, we give form to inner experiences that are difficult to find language to.

So much happens in the life cycle of a tray - natural titration of stress and emotional charge, parts work, the emergence of new symbolic meanings and metaphor that may feel relevant to our current challenges, the acting out of scenes to restore personal power ... I leave my own supervision Sandplay sessions feeling re-orientated towards my resources and insight.

There's also a quality of meeting with something deeper and essential - a date with the Mystery - that becomes evident throughout regular sits with the sand.

26/08/2022

On the "working out" ~ The question I've be taking inward lately, and posing to those I sit with:

What if, in this moment, this didn't need to be worked out?

I'm interested in the somatic response to that question ... And while I'm big on the cultivation of self-reflection, like anything it can become imbalanced.

We may come to a point where the "working out" moves us into the painful realm of rumination and the key to our freedom and resolution actually lies in building our capacity to accept the path trodden and the mystery that is our unanswerable questions.

That there are simply some things we cannot know or don't have a simple answer for - and our self-care is accessed by the choices we make in the present moment.

Happy Friday folks.

06/07/2022

I'm often in awe of the inherent, helpful qualities that are present in stories deep pain and suffering. Even in the most dire of circumstances.

They may not be obvious to the sharer of these stories, which is why my support role is to catch and reflect these qualities so they can be highlighted, "taken in" and built upon ~ in expressive or narrative process.

In no way is this designed to minimise painful experiences, but rather to highlight exisiting strengths that sit alongside suffering.

We complex, deep and multi-storied humans cannot be reduced solely to our challenges.

27/06/2022

When the world feels a bit askew, I find my solace in exceptional writing - it's been a resource of mine since I was a wee one.

I know there's something really important about finding an accurate language for a personal experience - in one way, therapeutic work desires to support creation of an authentic language for our stories that is mutually understood and witnessed.

The following is from David Whyte's Consolations titled "Haunted" - it's a long one, stay with it. It's my soothing balm today (and also, this nest).

"We cease to be haunted when we cease to be afraid of making what has been untouchable real and touchable again : especially our understandings of the past and especially those who we wronged, those who we were wronged by or those we did not help. We become real by forgiving ourselves, and we forgive ourselves most authentically by changing the foundational patterns of our behaviour, especially our behaviour to those we have hurt. We cease to be afraid when we begin to be present in our own lives just as we find them - our earthly vulnerabilities - even in facing what we have banished from our thoughts and made homeless, even when we do not know the way forward ourselves. When we make a friend of what we previously could not face, what once haunted us now becomes an invisible, parallel ally, a beckoning hand to our future."

15/05/2022

On "healed" ~ inspired by recent conversations.

As Pema Chodron says "we think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."

Controversial perhaps, but I don't buy into the finite idea of "healed".

It appears to me like an illusion that, as a mirage, is endlessly shifting out of reach no matter what we do ~ keeping us as hungry ghosts, unable to fill up the void of our perceived brokenness.

"Healed" promises a shiny place where life no longer gets under our skin and I can't help feeling that to land there would be a loss. For to arrive at that place would be to lose an engagement with the world that while puts us at risk of pain, also exposes us to awe, joy, love and connection.

Rather than healed, I believe in cultivating integrated, healthy responses to our hurt and challenges.

I believe in the commitment to new pathways of relating to our suffering that gifts us relief and perspective - and often as a by-product, behavioural change.

I believe in reducing harm, restoring agency and the power of awareness, and in the urgent need of systemic change will ultimately support individual capacity.

Finally, I believe wholeheartedly in the balm of self-acceptance and the membership of full humanity ~ which includes a generous approach to our wounds.

I am not "healed", nor am I interested in an endpoint to my experience of relating to life, myself and others. I present here on IG as a Counsellor who may know some helpful things and can offer support, yet ultimately I am a human first with my own complex life experience - and my own s**t I'm learning to attend to as gracefully as I can.

Happy Sunday folks x

22/04/2022

A poem that reflects conversations today on becoming comfortable in "the fertile void".

A liminal, uncertain place often met in process work that offers us the emergence of new possibility and insight if we can just hold the tension of uncertainty ...

When we rush ourselves and our process to get quick resolution, something fundamental can be lost or overlooked.

Building capacity for the discomfort of not knowing (a practice) supports us to trust that an integral part of the psyche is moving us towards wellbeing - whether we consciously clock it or not.

04/04/2022

Retreat ~ Winter feels fitting for our second Soulcraft retreat. I always think of Winter as the season of moving inward and gently building resources that are then lived in the more external months of Spring and Summer. Autumn and Winter are my natural months - I feel most at home here.

Creating a Winter retreat with the intention of deepening into our own personal meaning of Soul has been a dream - particularly alongside two women .coaching who are as curious, committed and embodied in their explorations of nature, psyche and somatics as I am.

We have just a few spots remaining for our June 3-6 retreat here at Verrierdale, Sunshine Coast. 8 weeks to go as Nic reminded me this morning!

Breakthwork • Living Systems & Nature Wisdom • Symbol Work & Personal Myth • Expressive Therapies • Movement & Somatic Explorations • Relevant & appropriate psychoeducation

Please DM or email me for more details, or to secure your space.

Pic by

27/03/2022

Deepening into facilitating creative expression ~ via studying Expressive Therapies and now Sand & Symbol Therapy - has been a coming home for me. My therapeutic roots are based in creative explorations and depth work, having arrived to Counselling and talk therapies through a Transpersonal pathway.

There's room for both in what I do ~ the cognitive sense-making via talk therapies (namely Narrative) and the less defined expressive work.

However, I see that expressive process dives beneath the protections of the mind, accessing resources we may never have met via talk therapies alone. Particularly if words are hard to come by or speaking runs the risk of re-traumatisation.

Making the internal visible via drawing, moulding, creating scenes, moving the body to express a certain state ... the value of the process is so evident.

02/03/2022

In the heartbreak - how very human of me.

Within the coping strategies - how very human of me.

When at a loss of where to act first - how very human of me.

When grief overwhelms - and distraction takes it's place - how very human of me.

Where joy exists alongside hurt - how very human of me.

How very human of me.
How very human of me.
How very human of me.

I've repeated this deeply permissive line to myself of late - and to clients - in the midst of self-judgement over how we are "meant to be" in such turbulent, collectively painful times.

It allows for an exhale, a window for self-compassion - and perhaps a widening of capacity to take valuable actions for our communities and our humanity.

When we're not focused on how we are meant to be, we can focus on what we need to be in the moment - for ourselves and each other.

Action mitigates hopelessness.

Hold yourself tenderly. I'm holding us close.

- E

14/02/2022

This also isn't about forced positivity, prematurely seeking the lesson or bypassing the reality of our hurt.

This is about nuance, embodiment and multiple truths existing simultaneously. It's also about the refusal to be defined solely by our pain and recognition that we exist as multifaceted.

~ We can be hurting deeply and find presence and enjoyment brewing our morning coffee.

~ We can be depleted and miraculously find the energy for belly laugh.

~ We can be grieving and find awe and joy in a sunset.

~ We can be lonely and take pleasure in small connections with acquaintances.

The key is presence.

09/02/2022

Bill Plotkin shares - "Soul has been demoted to a new-age spiritual fantasy or a missionary's b***y, and nature has been treated, at best, as a postcard or a vacation backdrop or, more commonly, as a hardware store or refuse heap. Too many of us lack intimacy with the natural world and with our souls, and consequently we are doing untold damage to both."

The chronic loss of intimacy Plotkin speaks to is systemic and not the result of personal flaw, as neither our essential nature nor nature itself are priorities in cultures that rank capitalism, individualism and short term gain over community care and depth of inter/intrapersonal, somatic and environmental connection.

However, as we become greater resourced, there may be room for us to command (and demand!) a different path, towards a more nuanced, mature humanity that prioritises community, nature, Soul and attentive engagement with life and each other - and not for ourselves alone. I don't believe this to be a fluffy concept, but something that can be practiced and lived.

For me, the creation .coaching and I have been working on and alluding to (ahem, retreat!) feels like a contribution to this way of living. I also get to create and share alongside two women who I love and admire - the coolest.

Lots more to say about our retreat, in future posts. Watch this space.

- E

Pic by - thank you.

05/02/2022

I hope you have a spacious weekend folks.

While listening to .yoga.counselling 's clip yesterday on ambiguous grief (I highly recommend following Sarah for considered, nuanced discussions on emotional wellbeing), she reminded me of why the Counselling connection can be so potent - it fosters a personal, authentic language for our experiences.

When we can speak to our internal expressions - feelings, emotions, sensations - with much specificity and take the time to locate the words or phrases that feel right for us, a puzzle piece clicks in. I often experience a relief, softening or recognition personally, and hear and observe similar experiences in those I sit with.

You may be familiar with Emotions Wheel - a tool for widening our emotional vocab and finding the very word that rings true.

~ E

09/01/2022

Fundamentally, even more so than this idea of union, the word Yoga means integration. - Hareesh Wallis

For the last 8 months, I haven't been teaching publicly - aside from the "Yoga within Therapy" that occurs in sessions. I've been busy in therapeutic spaces, managing health and also at this point in my life, greatly interested in being student after 9 or so years as teacher. There's much to learn and revel in.

I've been applying practices and observing, tweaking and re-applying. Spending time with just one or two for longer periods and focusing on digesting their value. Sitting at the (virtual) feet of my teachers as often as I can. The studentship will continue this year, however I do plan on sharing a few pop-up, prop heavy restorative sessions and a workshop or two... TBC. The "Yoga in Therapy" continues and space is being created for more stand-alone 1:1 Therapeutic Yoga opportunities.

In a world of Yoga-lite, being reminded of the immensity and true value of this system becomes an essential practice in itself.

02/01/2022

A new year.

Let our work lie in unhitching our very value as humans from our suffering - for we all suffer. Yet our suffering is not indicative of our worth, personal failure, nor our goodness. It exists alongside the joy and wonder and becomes one of those great paradoxes of life.

We can reduce our suffering ~ self-compassion and awareness go a long way. Our power lies in knowing the behaviours that can contribute to our pain and inviting in new ways of response.

And when we suffer, perhaps we can hold ourselves with little judgement, more grace and lessen the grip it has on us.

Ultimately, may we become adept in meeting others in their suffering with greater presence, without the need to save them away from their experience.

May we uncover our most magnanimous selves and find the ground underneath us swiftly, if we lose our footing.

Happy New Year.

~ E

29/12/2021

UPDATE ~ Hi, hello, yes it's been a little while. I'm hoping your Christmas was all you needed it to be and that wherever you find yourself today, you're feeling supported.

This pic was taken on Christmas Day and I can assure you that it's a bit of an anomaly  - most days of my last two months has seen me in over-sized t-shirts and leggings (or just over-sized t-shirts). Putting it mildly, I feel a million years' old - chronic neuro illness will do that to you. I'm currently learning to navigate life in a new way, which includes how I show up as a Counsellor. Will I return? Absolutely. In fact, I'm returning to clients on January 10. The differences? I will be holding sessions solely online and at a reduced schedule for now. Are new clients welcome? Of course.

This is not the place I'd imagined I would be come December 30 this year, and I'm grieving life as I knew it. I'm also practicing (it's a practice!) being open to the opportunities and the slivers of gold that lie in this new space, including daily writing - such a gift.

I look forward to connecting with you soon, in session or otherwise. Thank you for your continued patience, care and support ~ it's treasured. May this new year bring with it some breathing room, for all of us.

E x

25/11/2021

15/11/2021

Update ~ Life provides the opportunity to meet ourselves in many different contexts - a wondrous invitation.

Currently, I'm meeting myself in the context of physical illness, which is as interesting to me as it is challenging - talk about depth work.

I've been absent from this space as I show up for myself (and numerous appointments) off-screen, and may continue to be sporadic for a period of time. My best contact remains my email : hello@ellesweetman.com.

I will be continuing to facilitate sessions, with a reduced schedule for now. My work remains deeply important to me, as is my health.

Take care of your hearts,

E x

23/10/2021

A little note ~ I've recently updated the fee schedule on my website. There's a slight increase to sessions which brings me into alignment with the national standard for my level of qualification and adequately reflects the post graduate studies I have completed over these last few years (and continue to complete!). I am committed to accessibility within my work and offer student/concession discounts, and compassion fees as required ~ I want to ensure this community that I'm flexible, mindful of financial responsibilities and always open to chat about this further.

E x