Caroline Pendray is a senior art therapist and Primary Mental Health worker. Caroline is a founding director of Liberation Art Gallery in Brighton, Sussex which is a neurodivergent and disabled-led organisation. With Arts for health at the core of the gallery’s ethos. Caroline holds a BA Hons in Applied and Media Arts and an MA in Art Therapy with 14 years post qualifying experience within the arts for wellbeing and mental health sector. For further information and session rates: www.carolinependray.com

I know that starting your therapy journey takes courage and therefore I offer a warm, empathetic and non-judgemental space to support you in taking those first steps. My approach is thoroughly trauma-informed as I place the safety and empowerment of all my clients as a priority. I am a queer affirming and anti-oppressive practitioner, with an intersectional and feminist theoretical lense. I work with teenagers and adults, offering short and long-term psychotherapy, aiming to offer an inclusive and safe therapeutic space, so alongside cultivating a meaningful therapeutic relationship with every client, I am mindful of those who may have face additional challenges when accessing more traditional therapies. I specialise in working with complex trauma.

I am a community engaged Artist,Muralist and Art Psychotherapist who centres all her practices around the benefits of tactile and visual materials. As a psychodynamically trained therapist, I work in a trauma informed way, focusing on what occurs in and around the relationships between our external and internal worlds. At points in life people experience challenges and changes when it comes to identity, an experience of loss, physical illness, trauma, relationships or insecure attachments. These experiences and how they continue to affect us can be hard to verbalise. Some of these circumstances may have occurred in our early preverbal life, be painful, or escape our words when we attempt to share them. Sometimes they can become overwhelming and hard to hold alone. At other times we may come to therapy with purely a sense of curiosity about how our journey through life is affecting our relationship with the present. Whatever the reason someone comes to therapy, I work with clients to create and hold a safe, playful and confidential space to explore and acknowledge; always supporting someone with the space to ask their own questions and agency to come to their own answers, both verbally,visually and sensorially.

I specialise in issues related to anxiety, sleep and dreams and bereavement. I have more than 10 years of experience working with children, teenagers and adults.  I offer lower cost rates for students, and I am always willing to discuss a sliding scale rate for those on low or reduced incomes. Please ask. 

It’s brave to seek help when you are struggling. I offer and hold a space for you to safely turn towards what is arising in you. I will support you with warmth and empathy to open up and explore your thoughts, feelings and inner world. As well as talking therapy, I provide a space to learn about yourself and manage your thoughts and feelings creatively using Art Psychotherapy. I am accredited by the HCPC* and am a member of BAAT.

I have an intuitive, playful and relational approach and have been working therapeutically for over a decade. During this time, I have worked as an online Counsellor, an Art Psychotherapist and a therapeutic Art facilitator in both primary and secondary schools, higher education settings, therapy centres and Online.  

I am also trained and experienced as a Yoga, Yoga Nidra and Pregnancy Yoga teacher, and this informs my work and gives a unique perspective. Support to learn breathing techniques can be profoundly useful to manage intense emotions such as panic and anxiety, and non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) and Yoga Nidra are powerful and restorative antidotes for deep fatigue and anxiety.