EILEEN O’NEILL ESTES, PH.D.,
LPAT-S, ATR-BC, GC-C

“I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.”

– Anna Freud

I am a licensed and board-certified art therapist and a certified grief counselor. I began my career in the field of mental health 30+ years ago. A constant thread through the years has been my focus on grief and loss. My journey began, and remains, in the area of psycho-oncology working with cancer patients and their family members. Over the years, I have branched grief and loss as it relates to major life changes, traumatic events, and living with mental health diagnoses.

I frequently use art therapy as a tool to help clients gain a clearer picture of themselves, their strengths and the areas of themselves and their lives that they want to nurture and grow. My definition of art therapy is that we are creating a visual of our thoughts and feelings. An example of this is the common grocery list. We create a grocery list to ease the anxiety of trying to remember what we need to buy when we are at the store- writing on paper, the items we need to buy, creates a visual that we can refer to. Just like the value of the grocery list doesn’t depend on perfect penmanship, nor does artistic ability determine the benefits of the art therapy experience.

What sustains me in my work is the constant exposure to the strength and resilience that people demonstrate through the most difficult times in their lives. We cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we will deal with the unexpected. While you may view coming to therapy as a sign of being most vulnerable, I see you as in your strongest moment. You know that you need change to become the best version of yourself and to live the life that you deserve.

Grief and loss are inevitable experiences in life, but the grief doesn’t define you and the loss doesn’t control how you experience life.