Hi there!

Lara Luxardi (she/her)

I am an Italian artist and psychotherapist who has been living and working in Galway since 2010. With over 14 years of experience facilitating creative, relational, and trauma-informed work in Irish schools and community settings, my practice focuses on supporting emotional wellbeing and inclusion, particularly among children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

My path into psychotherapy grew out of this engagement with the arts, where creativity became a vital language for children who lacked the words to be heard.

As both artist and psychotherapist, I work from an embodied, trauma-aware, and arts-centred perspective. Over time, I have learned to trust imagination as a resource and creativity as a profound healing force.

  • IACP (pre-accredited)

  • BA (Hons) Degree in Holistic Counselling and Psychotherapy, ICPPD Galway

  • Diploma in Psychology of Counselling, University Galway

  • BA (Hons) Degree in Visual Arts, Academy of Fine Arts of Venice

My story

My path to Psychotherapy with Lara began through my long-standing engagement with the arts, particularly in schools and communities where art emerged as a vital language for children who lacked the words to be heard. In helping them express what was unspeakable, I began to hear the quiet call of my own Inner Child, also needing space, voice, and freedom.

Going back to study psychotherapy meant carefully balancing the time with my son, sacrificing weekends and free time, doubling down writing essays instead of going for nights out, but also it meant hundreds of hours of therapy, group process, supervision. So much digging, stirring, activation, it hurt like hell at times AND I poured all my savings in it AND it was so worth it.

As my process unfolded, my creative practice experienced a shift. My ever-present Inner Critic began to step aside, making room for curiosity and a playfulness I had not been able to access for a long time. Gaining conscious awareness of my own process AND accepting what I do not know has been profoundly regulating. The more embodied I become, the more I feel a return to flow. Not to a new self. The real self beneath survival strategies.

There were moments of great enthusiasm and insight, and other times when I had to pause the searching and stirring to let it settle. Yet, the creative process never truly paused. The pages of my art journal, evenings of swing dancing, playful classroom moments with children, and imagination games with my son… They are all part of the ongoing exploration.

This business —this vocation— is not separate from those experiences: it is informed by them. It is a way of being.

Why This Matters to Me

Psychotherapy with Lara is more like a vocation, a calling that brings together everything I value about art, humanity, and healing. It’s the place where my background in the arts and my therapeutic training meet in service of something larger than myself.

I have always believed that artists have a role and a responsibility within their communities: to witness, to translate, to hold space for emotion and imagination. To make a statement, send a message. Through my psychotherapy practice, that instinct has taken on a new form.

The training gave me stronger tools, clearer ethics, and a new lens, but the essence remains the same. This is my contribution to the community, a way giving back, of offering care, creativity, and presence where they are most needed.