What happens in a session?

When we first meet, I will ask you to tell me about what issue it is that makes you look for therapy.  We may explore this through talking, or it may be that you would like to work through creative media. How we work will be your choice. I will ask you to tell me about your life so that we can explore what your story has been and what your are working towards. If we decided to work together we will set a contract which is an understanding between us around confidentiality, the session time, the session fee and other logistics.  We will also look at goals for the therapy and talk about how to review the work.   

 Sessions are 50 minutes long and are offered at the same time on a weekly basis.   I am not a therapist who keeps silent or takes on distant role but will enter into the material you bring by listening, supporting and challenging you to listen to yourself and take what you hear seriously. The work is about us as a team listening to what is lost or hurt, frustrated or disempowered in your story and looking for the "soul-ution". Your Soul is the expert. My skills are about enabling you to trust yourself.

I am a member of the Confederation of Analytical Psychologists, the British Association for Dramatherapy,  and am registered with HCPC (Health and Care Professions Council), and UKCP (United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy), and as such abide by their ethical frameworks. I will maintain confidentiality around any material a client brings.  

What informs the therapy

"We do know that in a usual person who comes to therapy there is a torment of some kind, pathology of some kind.

And the first move is to affirm it – not fight it or even analyze it. Give the pathology shelter. Let it sit down in the chair".

James Hillman Inter Views page 24

I am trained and registered both in Psychotherapy (talk therapy) and as a Creative Arts Therapist, (Sesame Dramatherapy).  This means I can offer the option to talk or to use a more imaginative, symbolic approach which some people prefer. The work can be focused and short-term, or it may need a longer on-going timescale.  

I  draw heavily on the Inter Family Systems approach. IFS is an innovative approach that enables the client to learn how to listen to and befriend differing inner parts and attitudes as if they are characters, each with a valid perspective.   People come to understand their inner critic, the shamed or frightened child, the addict, the procrastinator, the melancholic, the ambitious in a new way.  When these are understood in their own right they can be viewed with compassion and curiosity and integrated so that there is unity inside, and less of the pulling in different ways which all humans experience.  All parts are welcome in this way of working.

I am a qualified  Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapist  - an approach that uses bi-lateral stimulation to coordinate the implicit (right brain) and explicit (left brain)  hemispheres of the brain together. It is highly effective with people who have been through traumatic events.  

As I am an Assertion Trainer it may be that we work more directly to build up your self-esteem and confidence, giving you everyday skills to cope with relationships, work and life in general.    We work with:

• What assertive behaviour is
• The Low Self Esteem/ High Self Esteem cycle and how it shows in the body
• Self Esteem Rights
• Where the Inner Critic comes from and how to ask it to take a rest
• What's my life like and what roles I play?
• How to use anger
• Saying No
• Preparing for change and the self-nurturing kit
• Making conversation

My practice works with what I call “The Deathlands” This means I am prepared to accompany people through the physical and spiritual issues involved when meeting a medical diagnosis, in bereavement, going through the dying process, considering the notion of the Afterlife – what does or does not happen when our life in a body comes to an end 

Location

Presently, I am working on the ZOOM platform, or offering garden sessions or 'walk and talk' sessions in Brockwell Park which is close by.  These will be offered, weather allowing, from the end of June 2021.  Face-to-face sessions will be reviewed in December 2021 as the Covid 19 safety situation becomes clearer.   

In times of the 'old normal', I work from an upstairs room in a house in SW2.  There is no lift, but there is a handrail on the 15 step stairway.  There is parking around the house except from 10.00 am to 12.30 pm.  The nearest tube is Brixton on the Victoria Line and then a five-stop bus ride or 20-minute walk.  

 Fees 

The fee for a session is £55.00.  I offer a small number of reduced-rate fees for people who are on benefits or in exceptional circumstances. This can be discussed at a first meeting.

 Clients Write:

 I didn't think that sessions on Zoom would work but they did and I was greatly supported by having a regular place each week of the lockdown.  I was very exhausted as a front line NHS worker and having a space that I could reach without more travelling was a bonus.  I felt met and supported by the work with Mary Smail and valued both the talking and some of the other creative exercises we used when we got stuck.   I liked Mary's lightness of touch about serious things.  

Rico 

I started working with Mary because I felt anxious, and she helped me to take a different approach to that anxiety. Rather than fearing it, I was able to look at it and hold it gently - to understand that it was a part of me that was working very hard to try to protect me. I was then able to try to look for that part of me that could "speak" to the anxious part, and tell it that it didn't need to work so hard. This was the part that I needed to access, and with Mary's help feel much more in touch with. In our work together I've been calling it my hearth. Where the other parts of me can gain strength and nourishment.   Working with Mary has helped me feel more fully connected with myself, more integrated as a whole person and more able to gently assert my space and my truth in the world. I work in frontline services with refugees and have found Mary's soul work approach very pertinent to a job in which I sit with people's pain and bear witness to their suffering as whole people, rather than as cases. I feel that the work we've done together has helped me make my career in this field more sustainable and helped me approach my work and relationships with a new feeling of purpose and spaciousness to reflect - to be able to look at the troubled world as it is and work with strength, supported by self-care, towards the world as it should be... I'm not quite there yet, but this is what Mary's warmth, acceptance and ability to be caring while empowering rather than coddling, has helped me to start working towards.  Thank you Mary.   

Alice     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Mary Smail is an entirely unique woman. Being in her presence is to dwell with a being that is enlightened. In other words, she is wise, she understands, she knows. You will feel held, attended to, and cared for if you are lucky enough to work with Mary. If you let her, she will help you discover your path to your own intuition. She is gentle and courageous. She is enchanting, but don't take my word for it, experience for yourself.  

 Mary Franklin-Smith, Dramatherapist

 I spent a short time working with Mary.  I came because I was being bullied in my work as a fitness professional.   We worked through assertion training methods and I left feeling a bit more sure of myself. Recommended!  

Steve   

Mary's well-balanced professionalism and personality provide a safe, comfortable environment in which to work. The lightness and colour of the therapy room provide peaceful, easy surroundings and the range of tools we used both through talking and by using imagination helped me a lot to see things I had not known about before in my life.  

Joy

I found Mary Smail during the first Covid lockdown.  Her approach like her website is different from most -  she brings a quality that is conveyed, even through Skype and then Zoom.   As a front-line worker the weekly slots were absolutely essential for me getting through the exhaustion and overwhelm.  

Joe