Biography – Maria Gillen

Maria spent 22 years in a Global Multinational environment, spending her last 4.5 years as a European Operations Manager. During this time she was trained in the use of transactional analysis as a customer service tool which transformed the working environment and customer satisfaction.  This led her to be interested in how Psychotherapeutic tools could be used in the Corporate Environment. Consequently, Maria became a Biodynamic Therapist (she graduated from the Centre for Biodynamic and Integrative Psychotehrapy, Galway 2007), and graduated from the MA programme in Dramatherapy, Maynooth in November 2010.

Since becoming a therapist Maria has worked with individuals and groups on mental health issues including body dis-ease (including eating disorders and self harm), self esteem, addiction, corporate burn out, community building, post natal depression, sexuality and suicidal thoughts.  She has worked with two therapy centres, the Tree of Life in Malahide and Aspen in Lucan.  She is an active member of the Speakout Playback group with recent work at the Doneraile Literary Festival and Amnesty International’s mental health workshop in Kilkenny.  She works mainly through the medium of Drama and Story Telling and has run workshops with groups on Team Building, Childcare, Elder Care, Sexuality, Self Esteem, Grief, Anger.  She has also run workshops for children in story making and drug awareness for primary school children.  Recently she has run a workshop for Primary School teachers in the Cork area on the use of Dramatherapy with Primary School children.  The Irish National Counselling Service (which serves victims of childhood abuse) ran a 10th Anniversary workshop called Transform the Shadows and Maria was part of this team which was led by Dawn Nance.  She has run Dramatherapy Workshops for the Critical Minds Conference in UCC (Cork 2011) and will be running a Dramatherapy workshop for IACAT (Irish Association of Creative Arts Therapists ) in March 2012.