Online Drama Therapy for Trauma, Relationships, and Self‑Awareness
HPCSA Registation: AT 0002186
I am an HPCSA‑registered Drama Therapist offering creative, expressive therapy both online and in person in Johannesburg, South Africa. Sessions provide a supportive, reflective, and imaginative space for healing, self‑exploration, insight, and meaningful integration.
I work with adults, adolescents, and couples using drama therapy and arts‑based psychotherapy for emotional wellbeing, relationships, and support in navigating traumatic experiences
Drama Therapy as a Creative, Embodied Approach
Drama therapy is a creative, embodied approach to psychotherapy that works with the whole person—mind, body, and inner world. By engaging imagination and lived experience, it can access meaning and insight that feel richer and more integrated than purely verbal reflection. This approach is especially supportive for trauma‑aware work, offering a flexible, compassionate process that honours safety, choice, and the body’s natural intelligence.
Individual Therapy
Online & In-Person Therapy Sessions
I work online, as well as in-person in Johannesburg, South Africa (Emmarentia).
.In trauma healing, drama therapy supports regulation and restoration of choice by working gently with the body, imagination, and present‑moment experience. It allows difficult experiences to be approached indirectly or directly and at a manageable pace, helping reduce overwhelm while strengthening a sense of safety, boundaries, and agency. This process supports integration by reconnecting emotions, body awareness, and meaning in a way that feels contained and respectful of each person’s nervous system.
Somatic, Trauma-Informed Therapy
Individual therapy offers a space in which clients can engage with and reflect on their experiences and patterns (behaviour, feeling, relationship) through embodied and creative means. This allows for insight, engaging different parts of self as part of building self-awareness and healing.
Working with Couples and Relationships
Drama therapy offers a supportive approach to couples and relational work by deepening awareness of both personal history and shared dynamics. Through metaphor and embodied exploration, emotions can be accessed with greater clarity, helping partners understand how past experiences shape present‑day roles, responses, and patterns. The work is collaborative and experiential, supporting empathy, communication, and new ways of relating, and can be offered online or in-person.
Online & In-Person Therapy Sessions
Group Therapy
Online & In-person Group Therapy
Alongside my online private practice, I also run drama therapy groups at a psychiatric recovery centre in Ferndale, Johannesburg.
Group therapy offers a supportive healing experience through drama therapy in a group setting, combining experiential work with the shared power of witnessing and being witnessed. Available as online and in‑person group therapy, this approach fosters connection, insight, and a sense of belonging through creative and relational exploration.
Body Image & Eating Disorders
Areas of Focus
Anxiety, OCD & Depression
Personality Disorders
Expat & Adjustment
Chronic Conditions
Bereavement
Identity
Infertility
Transitions (life stage, location, work)
Relationship & Family Dynamics
Meaning is a fundamental part of health and wellbeing, shaping how we understand ourselves and our lives. Meaning changes and develops throughout our lives as we, and our circumstances, shift. Drama therapy offers unique practices to explore and make meaning from lived experience.
It is through our bodies that we come into contact with life, have experiences, and store memories (both explicitly and implicitly). Our bodies are therefore central to the healing process, as patterns of behaviour, impulses, and feelings are enacted through embodied experience — and, as such, so is our healing.
Drama Therapy is client‑led, client‑paced and underpinned by holistic humanist principles. Each person has the capacity for healing and growth within them, and through creative, authentic engagement with self, this capacity can be supported and deepened over time.
Approaches That Shape My Therapeutic Practice
We understand far more about how trauma impacts the nervous system and its responses to perceived threat. During the therapeutic process, past traumatic experiences may emerge, and this can be an important part of healing. Equally important is approaching these stories — and the often overwhelming bodily responses they elicit — with careful attention to the client’s needs and experiences in the present moment. Trauma can be processed and addressed, but safety is a central feature of this kind of work.
My work is grounded in drama therapy and informed by humanistic, existential, somatic, and trauma‑informed approaches. Together, these perspectives support a relational, embodied, and ethically attuned therapeutic process.
How These Approaches Integrate with Drama Therapy
Humanist
Somatic
Trauma-Informed
Existential
Petronella D.
"Focusing on my bodily experience in therapy was new to me, and it has been so valuable, and really deepened the therapeutic journey."
Jean H.
"The group sessions always make me feel energised and connected. Things I hadn't felt in a long time before joining."
Client Experiences of Drama Therapy
Clients often describe drama therapy as a deeply embodied and relational experience.
