Culturally responsive therapy in Sydney & online
Culturally responsive therapy means your background, family, faith, and community are treated as an integral part of who you are, not as obstacles to get past.
I’m Jerico Mandybur, a CALD registered arts-based psychotherapist offering sessions in Sydney and online. You lead, and I stay curious.
Let me guess…
You’ve spent whole sessions over-explaining your culture just so a therapist will "get it".
You hold different versions of yourself, one for home and another for everywhere else.
You feel guilty for wanting something your family or community never imagined for you.
You wonder if your culture or faith will be treated as the thing that needs fixing in therapy.
You wish you could mention something abut your background without having to give a whole history lesson.
It’s not just you
Living between cultures—or between who you were raised to be and who you're becoming—is a common experience. And it can be quietly lonely when the people who seek help from don’t share it.
Being seen and heard for who you are, including all the complex overlapping parts, is a vital part of the therapeutic relationship. You shouldn’t have to spend your time in therapy explaining casual racism or family dynamics. And you shouldn’t have to censor yourself.
Belonging to yourself is possible
Many therapy models carry their own cultural assumptions, like being focussed on independence and individualism at the expense of a critical understanding of power structures and intersectionality.
My work is relational, trauma-informed, expressive, and somatic, with parts work and Gestalt approaches woven in. As a therapist with immigrant parentage from a mixed cultural background, I have a first-hand understanding of the need for culturally sensitive and responsive therapy. And I value providing it.
Why arts-based therapy for CALD & CARM people?
Talk therapy is wonderful. I’m a big fan. And some things live beyond the reach of clean explanations.
Some experiences are held deep in the body. Some inner information arrives as a sensation before finding words. This is the realm of pre-verbal knowledge.
If you've ever thought "I get it intellectually, so why am I still stuck?", you're in good company. Insight is a significant start.
Imagine what might emerge if you allowed your hands to make something, your body need to feel something, and your mind to receive new input from outside the thought-loop.
This is where arts psychotherapy comes in. It offers more than one way in.
What will a culturally responsive arts therapist provide for me?
In your first session, we talk. I'll ask what's brought you here, who and what matters in your life, and what you'd like me to understand about where you come from. You decide how much to share. I won't assume I know what your culture, faith, family, or wider life means to you.
From there, sessions are shaped around you. Some weeks may be more about conversation. Others might include drawing, colour, symbol, writing, movement, metaphor, or working with images, especially for experiences that don't translate neatly into language. If ritual, ancestors, nature, or spirituality matter to you, there's room for them all. If they don't, that's fine too.
The goal is always to provide you a safe-enough space in which to reflect on, explore, and express what you sense, value, experience, and know to be true. Slowly, self-trust, resilience, and a connection with your inner wisdom and unique way of being is built.
FAQs
-
I won't know everything about your background, and I won't pretend to. I'll ask, listen, and follow your lead. And I'll tell you when something specific is outside my knowledge.
-
That's a completely valid preference. If you'd feel safer with someone who shares your background, language, or faith/spirituality, I'll do my best to point you toward options. A good fit matters more than anything.
-
No. Family, faith, and community can be a source of strength. It can also be a source of pain at the same time. Often at the same time. We make room for complexity here. And I make no assumptions about your experiences or values.
-
I have a mixed cultural and ethnic background made up of North African, Mediterranean, Balkan Romani, and European parts. I am a first-generation settler in so-called Australia, with a lived experience of inherited trauma, religious wounding, and coming out as queer.
-
Not at all. Despite the name, “art therapy” focuses solely on the process, not the product. Art materials are simply tools to help you express and explore your experience, where words might not be enough. And often, using unfamiliar arts materials can yield the most meaningful process.
-
No, I will never analyse or interpret your art for hidden meanings. In creative arts therapy, we stay descriptive; exploring what sensations the colours, shapes, or textures of your materials and art evoke for you. In this way, I offer a supportive container in which you can notice and explore what your art process feels like, without having it dissected. Here, you’re always in control of what you share and how.
-
Yes. I work with self-managed and plan-managed NDIS participants to provide arts therapy under Capacity Building. Please mention your NDIS participant status in your email enquiry or exploratory call. Referrals welcome.
-
Medicare does not currently fund counselling and psychotherapy sessions, including creative arts therapy.
-
No. Unlike an art class, creative arts therapy is a form of psychotherapy guided by a trained arts-based therapist, focused on emotional growth and wellbeing rather than skills and aesthetics.
-
Creativity can take many forms. Sometimes it’s colour and image; other times, it’s language, silence, mindfulness, or the simple act of being witnessed. You are never under any obligation to engage with art materials in our sessions, despite it being named “creative arts therapy”. As a registered therapist, I can hold space for you as we weave the verbal, the somatic, and relational presence into our sessions—as well as any other holistic tools you’re drawn to, such as a Jungian approach to the tarot. It’s completely up to you.
-
Online or teleheath sessions work just as they would in person. Held via Zoom, you’re invited to use any form of art materials you have on hand; pencils, markers, paper, objects found around the house etc. Nothing is lost in the therapeutic process by meeting online, and in fact, it offers clients an accessible way to work with me no matter their location and access needs.
-
That’s never a problem. It’s a perfectly understandable nervous system response and it’s welcome here. The wonderful thing about arts therapy is that you never have to over-explain or behave in any supposedly “normal” way. The arts are here to support you when you lose your words, want to stim, or would rather hug a squishy than talk.
-
While creative arts therapy is a form of psychotherapy focusing on emotional integration, self-understanding, and growth; my creative coaching services support creative small business or self-employed professionals take positive action and acheive their goals. As such, these two services support different groups using very different approaches and paradigms. Creative coaching clients should not be seeking arts therapy, or have an established therapeutic relationship elsewhere.
Thresholds
A newsletter.
Thresholds is the Substack of Jerico Mandybur. A place where she offers personal reflections, regular essays, and creative practices exploring the art of inner life. Subscribe now for your FREE 20-min somatic centering practice.
