Susan Morrison, MA

Susan Morrison, MA

Professional Holistic Counsellor / Psychotherapist

She/Her/Hers

I had a variety of spiritual experiences as a young woman, a few of them on mind-expanding drugs but also without. These helped me to form and validate my understanding of a spiritual world particularly in connection with nature. Reading Theosophy, and later Anthroposophy furthered my ability to contextualise my experiences and my thinking.

For me, spiritual emergence is the daily effort to grow as a human being. At times we fall into emergency through being unable to process, or get distance from our own needs and feelings, or we can even get completely disconnected from them so that the wisdom of the Self is no longer accessible. These states of being disconnected are very distressing and sometimes with trauma experiences or with substance use seem irredeemable.

In becoming a Transpersonal counsellor, I had a special interest in spiritual development and the human being as a being both embodied and disembodied. In our own consciousness, becoming aware of how our ego strengths and weaknesses promote an understanding of our crossing of the thresholds, both upper and lower. Without this awareness a spiritual emergency can spontaneously happen. In healing from this the strength of the higher Self needs to be awakened.

I work with depression and anxiety, both of which cause dissociation which can be extreme, and lead to a spiritual emergency as the soul is not sitting properly in the body. I can help people to process their experiences if they are not at the point of hospitalisation, on psychiatric drugs, or other habitual drugs.

I have had 20 years experience working in the mainstream using many approaches to counselling, however I originally trained in Transpersonal counselling. I later studied an experiential modality called Psychophonetics which means the ‘sound of the soul’, and uses sensing, gesturing and expressive means such as sound, imagination, externalising and observing the Self. To meet and express needs and feelings in the moment and provide for these with sound and colour through imagination, experientially brings to the Self what it needs. It is a complex and beautiful modality which has its roots in Anthroposophy, (Rudolf Steiner’s work).

Anthroposophical Psychotherapy is now recognized as a formal discipline by the Anthroposophical Medical Section. There are a few different approaches to this type of spiritual psychotherapy. Originally therapy was based on education, Steiner based (Waldorf) schooling, and the biographical development of the human being. Artistic therapies and Eurythmy have become important parts of Anthroposophical healing modalities.

My intention in 2023, (post covid), is to run a creative self-development group using experiential methods. Having a focus on Spiritual health it would attract people struggling with challenges and blocks in this area.