Alumni Portraits
Voices of ISIS Graduates
~ Celebrating 20 years of Expressive Arts Therapy Training in Toronto ~
Edited by Nicole Arends, this book features the stories of ISIS graduates where they share their learning, experiences, triumphs and trials and express the impact that the expressive arts have had on their lives and careers. Click here to read the book. Click here to read about Valerey Lavergne Click here to read about Terri Roberton |
Samantha Sherer
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Office: Bloorcourt Therapy Centre 823A Bloor St. West 2nd Floor Toronto ON, M6G 1M1 200 meters west of Christie Subway Station Phone: 416-459-1907 Email: expressive.arts.therapy@gmail.com Website: www.expressive-arts-therapy.ca |
Samantha Sherer - C(OACCPP) EAT has 10 years experience offering Arts Therapy & Talk Therapy to women, men, trans people, children & youth in individual, couples & group settings. She’s a certified Psychotherapist & Counsellor with the OACCPP & a graduate of ISIS Canada.
“In my private practice, I use painting, drawing, sculpting, writing, drama, music & movement techniques to explore relationship problems, life transitions, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, anger & perfectionism. By guiding clients through art-making activities, they see problems and behaviour from a new perspective. Through discussion, we find new insights and concrete ideas of how to change their habits, to create the life they want. I use Emotional Mindfulness; blending Mindfulness Meditation techniques with DBT and Arts Therapy, for those diagnosed with Personality Disorders, PTSD, Trauma and Eating Disorders. Working collaboratively with families, going through a Separation or Divorce and Re-partnering, I can help all family members cope with grief & loss and offer support for parents to develop a successful co-parenting relationship.”
I graduated in 2002 from the 3-year ISIS training program and have been in private practice since 2003 in Toronto. For many years I worked for a Family Service agency in Toronto working with Separating / Divorcing families.
There is some irony in this last job of mine. During the course of my training at ISIS, I myself got divorced. I had been warned by the interviewers at the application stage that this was a possibility; that the ISIS training is very intense and that many relationships struggle to bridge the gap when one person “does the work” and the other doesn’t. I fluffed it off… “Not my marriage.” I thought… As warned, my marriage fell apart in second year and then shortly thereafter, so did I. To be fair, like so many of us, I came broken to ISIS.
ISIS functioned as a kind of boot camp for me…tore me down and rebuilt me into the person I needed to become. The teardown was relatively quick, the rebuild took a little longer to get back on track. My health, both physical and mental, deteriorated to a place where work and relationships were hard to hold on to. It was a grueling journey back, but with great support from friends and family and a few arts therapists along the way, I have become the person I always knew I could be.
And through this journey I have picked up a kind of compassion that I was not capable of before. It is this compassion that drives my practice and is making me the therapist I knew I could be. As a true experiential learner, I am able to understand many of my client’s difficulties in adjusting to and accepting their lives as a result of learning to live with my own struggles.
One particular client, clearly articulated an “aha” that resonated so strongly for me. With her permission I quote her here. After a long and difficult journey, she came to me in my private practice. Through the accumulation of skills she learned in several mental health institutions and in my practice through the arts she has “recovered” and has resumed her very successful life, after a hiatus of many years. We worked with her body and creativity and metaphor, using Emotional Mindfulness techniques that I initially developed and collected, in part, to heal myself, many years ago.
Sometime ago she turned to me mid-session and stated emphatically, “It’s amazing how many things are not the end of the world.” She was so earnest in this revelation. We paused for a moment to mull this over and then we laughed and laughed. We laughed as the statement resonated with her particular journey. We laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the thought it supplanted; that life is an emergency and we laughed at all that time she spent being overwhelmed by her life’s struggles. Of course she was unaware while we laughed, of how strongly I could sympathize with this statement. We could laugh at all this pain because through the arts, she had learned to play with her struggle instead of being swallowed by it.
I have been lucky enough to use Expressive Arts therapy in every single job I’ve had since graduating. I developed an Expressive Arts therapy program in a day treatment mental health unit of a hospital, developed ExArts groups for several women’s and trans people’s agencies, and used ExArts therapy in my work with separating/divorcing families at a Family Service agency. I had to do my share of counseling in most of my jobs, but it’s worth it for the opportunity to bring ExArts Therapy into those work environments. I believe we can create a paradigm shift in their models if we do good work and act professionally. It has been my modus operandi and so far has been successful for me. I enjoy the challenges of revealing the power of the arts in existing paradigms.
Wherever I have worked, other practitioners have been intrigued by the way the arts can slice through to the heart of the matter, even while the clients are having fun. Sometimes they want to know the ‘secret.’ “What’s the magic activity that I am doing in my office that has clients laughing while achieving insight?” “Play” I tell them. “Art” I tell them. “Gentle accompaniment.” “Witnessing.” “Engaging with.” “Kindness.” “ Authentic connection.” “Acceptance.” “Honesty.” Those are our secrets. Those are the secrets ISIS taught me many years after having left it’s hallowed halls.
The following artwork was created by the client quoted above and shared with her permission.
Top Left + Right - a bleak day, painted as a way of soothing some of the desire to cut
Bottom Left - An image of the inner struggle to not engage in self-harm
Bottom Right - An image of the recovery journey
“In my private practice, I use painting, drawing, sculpting, writing, drama, music & movement techniques to explore relationship problems, life transitions, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, anger & perfectionism. By guiding clients through art-making activities, they see problems and behaviour from a new perspective. Through discussion, we find new insights and concrete ideas of how to change their habits, to create the life they want. I use Emotional Mindfulness; blending Mindfulness Meditation techniques with DBT and Arts Therapy, for those diagnosed with Personality Disorders, PTSD, Trauma and Eating Disorders. Working collaboratively with families, going through a Separation or Divorce and Re-partnering, I can help all family members cope with grief & loss and offer support for parents to develop a successful co-parenting relationship.”
I graduated in 2002 from the 3-year ISIS training program and have been in private practice since 2003 in Toronto. For many years I worked for a Family Service agency in Toronto working with Separating / Divorcing families.
There is some irony in this last job of mine. During the course of my training at ISIS, I myself got divorced. I had been warned by the interviewers at the application stage that this was a possibility; that the ISIS training is very intense and that many relationships struggle to bridge the gap when one person “does the work” and the other doesn’t. I fluffed it off… “Not my marriage.” I thought… As warned, my marriage fell apart in second year and then shortly thereafter, so did I. To be fair, like so many of us, I came broken to ISIS.
ISIS functioned as a kind of boot camp for me…tore me down and rebuilt me into the person I needed to become. The teardown was relatively quick, the rebuild took a little longer to get back on track. My health, both physical and mental, deteriorated to a place where work and relationships were hard to hold on to. It was a grueling journey back, but with great support from friends and family and a few arts therapists along the way, I have become the person I always knew I could be.
And through this journey I have picked up a kind of compassion that I was not capable of before. It is this compassion that drives my practice and is making me the therapist I knew I could be. As a true experiential learner, I am able to understand many of my client’s difficulties in adjusting to and accepting their lives as a result of learning to live with my own struggles.
One particular client, clearly articulated an “aha” that resonated so strongly for me. With her permission I quote her here. After a long and difficult journey, she came to me in my private practice. Through the accumulation of skills she learned in several mental health institutions and in my practice through the arts she has “recovered” and has resumed her very successful life, after a hiatus of many years. We worked with her body and creativity and metaphor, using Emotional Mindfulness techniques that I initially developed and collected, in part, to heal myself, many years ago.
Sometime ago she turned to me mid-session and stated emphatically, “It’s amazing how many things are not the end of the world.” She was so earnest in this revelation. We paused for a moment to mull this over and then we laughed and laughed. We laughed as the statement resonated with her particular journey. We laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the thought it supplanted; that life is an emergency and we laughed at all that time she spent being overwhelmed by her life’s struggles. Of course she was unaware while we laughed, of how strongly I could sympathize with this statement. We could laugh at all this pain because through the arts, she had learned to play with her struggle instead of being swallowed by it.
I have been lucky enough to use Expressive Arts therapy in every single job I’ve had since graduating. I developed an Expressive Arts therapy program in a day treatment mental health unit of a hospital, developed ExArts groups for several women’s and trans people’s agencies, and used ExArts therapy in my work with separating/divorcing families at a Family Service agency. I had to do my share of counseling in most of my jobs, but it’s worth it for the opportunity to bring ExArts Therapy into those work environments. I believe we can create a paradigm shift in their models if we do good work and act professionally. It has been my modus operandi and so far has been successful for me. I enjoy the challenges of revealing the power of the arts in existing paradigms.
Wherever I have worked, other practitioners have been intrigued by the way the arts can slice through to the heart of the matter, even while the clients are having fun. Sometimes they want to know the ‘secret.’ “What’s the magic activity that I am doing in my office that has clients laughing while achieving insight?” “Play” I tell them. “Art” I tell them. “Gentle accompaniment.” “Witnessing.” “Engaging with.” “Kindness.” “ Authentic connection.” “Acceptance.” “Honesty.” Those are our secrets. Those are the secrets ISIS taught me many years after having left it’s hallowed halls.
The following artwork was created by the client quoted above and shared with her permission.
Top Left + Right - a bleak day, painted as a way of soothing some of the desire to cut
Bottom Left - An image of the inner struggle to not engage in self-harm
Bottom Right - An image of the recovery journey
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