After all, we are nothing more than a bunch of light

that occasionally goes dark

Despina Ploussiou is the founding visionary of the Syros Healing Waves Festival, an innovative international gathering that brings together leading clinicians, scholars, and artists to explore the intersections of trauma healing, science, and the arts, with pleasure as a vital dimension of post-traumatic recovery. Conceived from her vision and realized through the Trauma2Therapy Institute, which was co-founded by herself, Sofia Vasilakou and Konstantinos Plousios, the festival has positioned the island of Syros as a unique locus for global dialogue on knowledge, creativity, and post-traumatic flourishing.

Trained in both the United States and Europe, Despina Ploussiou is a psychotherapist with expertise in the treatment of trauma, PTSD, and Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). She earned her Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy at Hofstra University, following undergraduate studies in Psychology and Sociology at the American University of La Verne. She has completed the advanced training (Level 3) in Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) and has studied close to some of the foremost figures in the field, including Bessel van der Kolk, Richard Schwartz, Frank Anderson, Janina Fisher, and Salvador Minuchin.

Despina is the official translator and scientific editor of the Internal Family Systems theory into Greek, ensuring both terminological precision and conceptual clarity. She also directs pre-level one IFS trainings in Greece, thereby cultivating a steadily expanding community of IFS-informed professionals. Her therapeutic orientation integrates Jungian Sandplay Therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Ericksonian Clinical Hypnosis, Polyvagal Theory applications, and EMDR trauma therapy, complemented by a five-year program in Systemic Constellation Work (Bert Hellinger) with Dr. Dimitris Stavropoulos.

Her professional experience spans both Greece and the United States. She has worked in psychiatric clinics, public and private schools, and as a mental health supervisor at the Archdiocese of New York’s Support Center for Abused Women, as well as at the HANAC Child and Family Psychosocial Program in collaboration with New York City’s Child Protection Services (ACS).

Her scholarly contributions include the Greek translation of Dr. Frank G. Anderson’s book Transcending Trauma – Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems Therapy (24 Grammata Editions) and the scientific editing of the Greek editions of Dr. Richard Schwartz’s books, No Bad Parts (Papasotiriou Editions) and Internal Family Systems Therapy (Dioptra Editions).

Since 2004, Despina has maintained a private practice in Voula, Attica, offering trauma and grief therapy for adults, parents, and teenagers. She also coordinates self-awareness groups in collaboration with public and private institutions.

Through her clinical work, her trainings, and her vision for Trauma2Therapy, and Syros Healing Waves Festival, Despina plays a central role in bringing IFS and trauma-informed healing to Greece, bridging cutting-edge neuroscience with embodied and compassionate therapeutic practice.

TRAUMA THERAPY

Rewrite your story.  Rebuild your life.

Trauma Revisited

“Childhood abuse and neglect, adulthood assault, poverty, and discrimination have devastating personal consequences, yet medicalizing subsequent distress permits a level of denial and distancing that absolves those in power of responsibility for addressing injustice and instituting legislative change.” 

– Eleanor Longden et al.

Over 50% of people who try to access mental health services have experienced trauma, defined by The American Psychological Association (APA) as “a person’s emotional response to an extremely negative (disturbing) event.”

Despite the indisputable link between trauma and poor mental well being, our current mental health system pays little attention to healing trauma. Our system has emphasized labels, diagnoses, biology—not understanding what happened to us and the understandable impact it has on us.

When you’ve experienced trauma, it can be excruciating. You may feel at a loss as to how to process what you’ve been through or how you can even start to heal. You just want to experience a sense of safety again. But the impact of trauma can cut deep.

Even if you feel lost, there’s hope and a variety of trauma treatment modalities that can help you.

In the last several years, the way we understand Trauma, its physical and psychological consequences and how to treat it, has evolved tremendously.

When our nervous system gets flooded, cognition is knocked offline, cognitive behavioral approaches, psycho-education, and insight-based techniques become ineffective, or even counterproductive.

Efficient Trauma work integrates developmental, neurobiological, psychodynamic and interpersonal aspects of the impact of trauma and its treatment.

Find out more

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

Trauma Therapy
Individual Therapy
Anger Management
Separation, Divorce
Personal growth
self-compassion, & self esteem

Family Therapy
Parenting
Couple Therapy
Families in Transition
Domestic violence
Abuse

Panic Attacks
Group Therapy
Phobias
Adolescents
Anxiety & depression
Sexuality & sexual identity
Stress management

Bereavement & grief
Midlife relationships
Retirement
Aging

Jungian Sandplay Therapy
(For adults)


Jungian Sandplay Therapy
(For adults)

“Often the hands will solve a mystery which the mind has vainly struggled to solve.”
Carl Jung

Sandplay therapy was founded by Swiss therapist Dora M. Kalff, (1904-1990). Kalff based her theory on Jung’s principles of psychology and the work of the famous child psychiatrist Margaret Lowenfeld. Sandplay therapy is a nonverbal, therapeutic intervention that uses a box of sand, miniatures, symbols, and sometimes water, materials which the client interacts with within a free and safe space and begins to create scenes of worlds that reflect his subconscious inner map, “deep-soul” emotions and struggles. Through this symbolic language, the unconscious communicates with the external reality in the here and now in a nonverbal way. This form of therapy uses tray as the safe physical framework where Spirit and body meet. The symbolic miniatures operate as great archetypal tools of non-verbal communication in a non-cognitive processing.

Sand therapy is often used with those who have suffered some form of trauma, neglect or abuse. Sandplay is suitable for young children, who often can’t express their inner feelings with words, it’s also a technique that is useful for teens and of course adults who have difficulty expressing themselves verbally, they may have suffered some form of severe trauma, experiencing relationship issues, or for those who are interested in deeper exploration of the psyche for personal development purposes.