Hello

My name is Lindsay Ritscher, I am a licensed professional counselor (LPC) and Registered Board Certified Art Therapist (ATR-BC). I started my career as an artist, with a BFA in Illustration from Pratt Institute and later continued my education at Emporia State University where I received my Master of Science in Art Therapy Counseling in 2014. I have also completed a two-year certification in Dr. Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, and I am trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) by EMDR Center of the Rockies. I have worked in a variety of settings over the course of my career including a psychiatric hospital for children and teens, public school settings, a residential and day treatment center for children, community mental health, and private practice.

A little about me

I am an able-bodied, cisgender, neurodivergent, white woman of Italian, Irish, & English lineage.  I benefit from many kinds of privilege about which I am constantly learning and unlearning, in the service of personal and structural change.  I am striving to hold space, for myself and others, to make sense of the impact of racism, colonization, intergenerational trauma, social inequity, and oppression and how to move towards healing while working within systems that are still oppressive, colonial, and capitalist in nature. I am seeking to empower and support practices that dismantle institutional and internalized oppression and increase a sense of social connectedness and community. I embrace the value of generational wisdom and healing strategies that have been practiced for centuries, if not millennia, and wish for continued restoration and integration of creative processes within healing practices in the western world. Above all else, I prioritize the skill and expertise of families and communities and what they know, through experience, to be healing. 

I was drawn to art therapy based on lived experience with the importance of creativity in mediating psychological distress and the power of visual art as a regulating experience and means of expression that does not require words. Without creative forms of expression so much of the human experience would be unshareable. I am acknowledging in the present what has been known since the beginning of human history: that healing happens when we move, sing, paint, tell stories, and create together. 

In clinical practice, I draw from theoretical approaches including liberation psychology, the Appalachian approach to expressive arts therapy, and client centered counseling theory in order to co-create spaces that honor the expertise of a person’s individual or communal wisdom. I am also trained in neurobiologically informed approaches including the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, Polyvagal Theory, and the Expressive Therapies Continuum, which act as contemporary evidence to the efficacy of long-held healing practices. 

In clinical supervision, I prefer reflective approaches and learned reflective supervision practices through training and experiential work with Dr. Kristie Brandt, NP, MSN, DNP who also integrates neurosequential concepts into reflective supervision. I acknowledge that valuing a collaborative and reflective approach is tied to my cultural values and may not align with every individual's cultural values in which case I strive to be flexible and adjust my role. I am also familiar with the Developmental Model of Supervision and am mindful that I may be needed as a teacher, a mentor, or a consultant depending on the individual and the circumstance.