About Us

The team at the CoBear Collective has worked with at-risk communities, children, young adults, and women, engaging with a range of issues including stress, depression, anxiety, dissociation, and interpersonal conflict, and more specific cases dealing with childhood sexual abuse, rape, PTSD, and eating disorders.

Using psychoanalytically informed psychodynamic therapy and expressive arts based therapeutic practices, we at the Collective work with the mind and the body, viewing these as intricately intertwined. Our therapy modules use a mix of verbal and non-verbal expressive and healing modalities that target and work with the mind-body complex as a whole.

With our combined experience and qualifications in using psychodynamic and expressive arts methods in therapeutic practice, we at the Collective support the vision to improve and enhance inclusive access to quality mental healthcare. In this regard, we offer individual and group therapy at sliding rates.

The Clinic: About Us

Our Approach

We follow a non-diagnostic approach. We do not wish to diagnose our clients, and believe that their concerns, struggles, and disorders are representative of how they have coped with their life so far.

The therapy space is not dictated by our belief of the client’s problems, but is a space shared by the therapist and the client to arrive at truth, meaning, and healing together.

It is not possible to completely know or understand the conflicts and meanings of unique individuals but through a mutually established trusting and therapeutic relationship, it is possible to enable the client to arrive at their own solutions and determinations. The client is, therefore, able to live and express a life of their own.

The aim of therapy is to be able to recognise coping mechanisms inherent to the individual, and work through and with them to create a healthier, more holistic, and robust relationship with intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships, reality, and the stresses of a life that is lived.

In this regard, we find it imperative to give the time and space necessary to work through conflicts and struggles, instead of trying to impose a fixed time and forcing interpretation/insight.

The Clinic: Text

What Is Psychodynamic Psychotherapy?

Psychodynamic psychotherapy refers to a form of mental health related therapy that uses psychoanalytically informed theory for the exploration of the client’s internal conflicts.

Instead of symptom focused approach of diagnosis such as Psychiatry or CBT, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy is concerned with a person’s internal and interpersonal conflicts, their life histories, their emotions, and the events that have made them who they are in the present moment.

The Clinic: Text

What Is Arts-Based Therapy (ABT)?

Arts-Based Therapy (ABT) involves the use of various art forms like music, drama, visual arts, movement, and story-telling to address specific therapeutic goals.

ABT is particularly effective in working with clients on developing the capacity for expression, a pivotal first step in enabling exploration and communication. These are key in any therapeutic relationship and, more importantly, in creative engagement with the self and the world.

The focus in ABT is on experiencing and relating with emotions, thoughts and ideas without actually having to explain or find words for these experiences. As such, you may never even talk about your self or your history with the therapist if you don't want to.