Holistic Psychotherapy Combining Music Therapy and Human-Centered Counseling for Whole-Person Healing

Even when I'm not in session, I am still a musician outside of the therapy room. I play in a band and I still enjoy performing and learning music on my own. I also love to be outside. I love to go hiking and swimming and sitting in a hammock. I love to be in the outdoors and even in session, try to bring my clients outdoors when I can. So those are my favorites. Hi, my name is Sarah Woolson. I'm a psychotherapist and music therapist at Perspectives Center for Holistic Therapy. I've been with Perspectives Center for Holistic Therapy for a month as a therapist out of grad school and just finished my year long master's level internship What clients can expect when they work with me is someone who makes them feel comfortable, someone who asks them to really analyze themselves and look inward, but also someone that can make them laugh and not take things too seriously. I really try to bring my clients back to their body, to their souls, out of their minds sometimes in therapy. And I also ask my clients to get creative and expressive in the therapy space as well. My first five years, I worked as a music therapist in a pediatric intensive care unit at a children's hospital and working in the hospital with kiddos. I worked a lot with mental health concerns, and it made me want to be able to do more when working with people that are struggling with their mental health. So I went back to school, and now I can say that I am a mental health counselor and a music therapist, and I get to use both of those techniques and trainings and modalities in my work with clients. So I love bringing things like music and creativity into therapy. And I think that music is really healing and can really help a lot of people to feel better. So I'm really excited to be able to bring both into therapy and try something a little different. What made me want to join the team with Perspectives after my internship was the people, number one. I feel like a part of a family at Perspectives. And even though this job can feel isolating, sometimes the people at Perspectives help you to stay connected. Also, because we are a holistic practice and approach therapy, looking at the whole person, I really admire the way that we're taught to prioritize that with our clients, and I think it makes for really effective change in therapy. As a therapist, I feel pretty unique in that I'm trained in counseling and music therapy, and so I combine those in my work. I'm primarily human centered, and I really try to let clients lead in the therapy room when they want to. I also incorporate some behavioral techniques and try to work with clients through processing maladaptive beliefs and using tools from therapy in their day to day life. I also like to use mindfulness, creativity, and movement to bring us back to that whole person approach and try to work on our mental health in every area of our lives. I believe therapy benefits people because I don't know when else people are doing this work or even looking inward and questioning how they might be able to live their lives differently. In light of things like trauma and suffering, which unfortunately, are not rare in our world. We need to heal, and no one is meant to sit in an endless cycle of suffering without help in how to pull out of that, how to change the way they feel in the way they're living. I hope that people can open their eyes to what they want and what they deserve and feel brave enough to take the step for asking for help. Being a part of Perspectives has given me a whole new meaning to holistic therapy and the concept of being whole. We as humans, function as a sum of our parts. We're a sum of the organs and tissues in our bodies that make us work. And we also are a sum of our experiences. So we need to be approaching healing by looking at the whole person, looking at our emotional and physical and cognitive symptoms, because all of those things are related. And when we really try to look at our whole experience, I think that we can find healing and change and just know ourselves better.