Andreea Abe Adebowale: Vision, relationship and clinical rigor in child and family psychotherapy

An in-depth conversation with Andreea Abe Adebowale about her professional journey in child and family psychotherapy, her role as President of the APRICAS Association, and the vision behind a training school dedicated to psychotherapists who work relationally, with authenticity and clinical rigor.

Andreea Abe Adebowale is a mental health specialist, highly specialized in assessment and therapeutic intervention with children, adolescents, families, parents, as well as adults. She holds multiple national and international specializations in clinical psychology, integrative psychotherapy, play therapy, family therapy, dramatherapy, adult therapy, supervision, and professional training in all these fields.

She is the President of APRICAS – the Association for Integrative Relational Psychotherapy of the Child, Adolescent, and Family System, a training school for psychologists accredited by the Romanian College of Psychologists.

She is also a speaker in the field of parenting and child mental health, particularly in the context of child development within the family and educational environments.

She is the author of play therapy books, psychological assessment and therapeutic intervention manuals for mental health professionals, as well as psychoeducational materials for parents and teachers. She works in private practice and collaborates with various institutions.

C&B: If we were to look at the narrative thread of your career, what were the key moments that defined you?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: The narrative thread of my career begins from a place of professional confusion, but with a strong motivation for learning and development. A defining moment was my personal development and psychotherapy process, which transformed an initial rejection of working with children into a clear professional calling toward working with children and families. Choosing a master’s program in child, couple, and family assessment and therapy, alongside training in integrative psychotherapy, consolidated this direction.

A second key moment was my professional debut working with children with neurodevelopmental disorders (autism, intellectual disabilities, genetic syndromes, etc.) and my involvement in NGOs. Although valuable as experience, these contexts helped me understand that the behavioral therapy approaches commonly used in treating these issues were not aligned with me, and they guided me toward seeking therapeutic approaches closer to the relational and expressive nature of the child.

Entering the educational environment as a teacher and school counselor in an international school represented a major stage of professional growth. There, I significantly diversified my tools, deepening my work in socio-emotional education, mindfulness, school-adapted play therapy, and interventions for special educational needs.

At the same time, developing my private clinical practice marked an essential shift: clarifying my therapeutic identity around play therapy and expressive-creative techniques. National and international specializations in this field led to a rapid expansion of my practice and to the decision to leave the educational environment in order to work at a deeper clinical level with children and their families.

Another defining moment was the transition from the exclusive role of clinician to that of trainer and supervisor. The invitation to teach within integrative psychotherapy training programs and, later, the development of my own training and supervision programs opened a new stage of professional maturity.

Writing my first book for specialists, followed by adapting materials for parents and teachers, as well as engaging as a public speaker, represented the natural extension of my clinical practice into the field of education and psychoeducation.

All these stages culminated in founding an accredited training school dedicated to integrative relational psychotherapy for children, adolescents, and families – a project close to my heart that synthesizes my clinical and training experience and my professional values. My journey continues to be guided by continuous learning, curiosity, and authenticity.

C&B: What has been the most difficult moment in your journey so far, and how did you overcome it?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: The most difficult moments of my career were leaving my position in the school environment and transitioning to private practice within my own private psychology office. I consider this moment difficult because, in a liberal profession, especially in the early years, there is not the same level of stability, predictability, and security as in a contract-based institutional job. Making such a decision – leaving that (sometimes only apparent) security – inevitably activates many fears.

I know this path of relating to professional fear very well, both from personal experience and from my roles as mentor and supervisor for early-career psychologists, and I know how paralyzing it can be. However, it was not only the uncertainty of entering the world of solopreneurship that was difficult, but also the awareness that, once leaving the school environment, the meaningful relationships I had built there – with dear people in whom I had invested time and energy – would diminish in frequency and intensity. For me, high-quality interpersonal relationships are one of the central values of my life.

What helped me make the transition from a predictable to a more unpredictable environment were several essential resources.

Personal resources – my organized internal structure and my willingness to work. I was not afraid of effort; on the contrary, at times I may have worked too much to compensate for the apparent insecurity of freelance life. However, I did so in a structured and organized way, which significantly increased the quality of my work.

Professional competencies – my international specializations and taking on the role of trainer for other psychologists greatly strengthened my confidence in my professional skills.

Solid, diverse, and sometimes challenging clinical practice gained during my years working in the school environment significantly reduced my fears regarding complex cases in private practice. I managed these situations much more easily once people began coming to my office. It was easier to work with clients already motivated for change or with parents seeking psychological services for their children from a place of awareness and genuine concern, rather than from conditioning or denial, as often happened in the school setting. This essential factor in therapeutic progress – client motivation – represents approximately 15% of therapeutic success, alongside another 15% supported by the quality of the therapeutic relationship. Thus, my private work reached a different level of depth and quality.

External resources – family support, financial stability at that stage of my life, and the fact that I was not yet a parent and therefore did not feel direct responsibility for another soul. This aspect can sometimes complicate or even block major professional decisions.

C&B: Is there a dream or ambition that has always guided you, regardless of obstacles?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: Yes, my dream of opening a psychotherapy training school for children and their families, recognized worldwide as a therapeutic approach, is an old and deeply rooted one in my professional journey. This dream has its roots in France, in my work alongside one of my trainers and mentors, who offered me my first authentic model of relational psychotherapy, not only through the training process but also through his own human model.

Ken Evans, the founder of the integrative relational therapeutic approach, told me many years ago, during a psychotherapy camp organized at his farm in France, that he was proud of me and happy to see that I would carry integrative relational psychotherapy forward in Europe. That seed, planted by Ken at the beginning of my career, grew over time and took stable form once I clarified my professional niche: therapeutic work with children and their families.

This direction became the trunk of my professional tree, and the multiple national and international specializations are the branches that supported and developed it. The fruits of this stable and well-rooted tree can be seen today in my work as a trainer within the training school of the APRICAS Association, a professional training association accredited by the Romanian College of Psychologists, founded in 2025. From these “fruits,” generations of psychologists who will become psychotherapists – both in Romania and internationally – are nourished.

C&B: What did you look like at the beginning of your journey, and how do you feel you have transformed up to the present?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: At the beginning of my journey, I was like a leaf in the wind. I was carried wherever the wind took me, without clarity or direction. However, as valuable mentors appeared in my life and my intense work in all these directions deepened, confusion disappeared and gradually transformed into ability, competence, and vision. Especially after I clarified my niche and began pursuing highly specialized training courses, everything started to flow naturally.

C&B: If we were to meet your team or collaborators, what do you think they would say about you?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: They would say that I am an extremely hardworking, structured, and organized person, sometimes with a directive leadership style, yet equally centered on high-quality interpersonal relationships. They would also say that my professional vision and mission for the coming years are clear and that I have the capacity to bring alongside me people with similar visions and values. They might add that sometimes I tend to want control and turn into a “parent” who scolds, but that I am able to reposition myself and transform situations into play – a process that makes me more flexible and brings me back into authentic contact and relationship.

C&B: What is the most important decision you have made that changed your trajectory?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: The moment I accepted the professional role of trainer for psychologists who wish to become psychotherapists, initially within the Romanian Association of Integrative Psychotherapy and later in my own practice, represented a turning point in my career. Teaching others, translating for psychotherapists in training what I was already doing in my clinical practice with children, adolescents, families, and adults, brought a significant deepening of the quality of my own work as a practitioner.

When you teach others about your own practice, your clinical skills inevitably refine. At the same time, taking on the role of supervisor – another essential professional role – accelerated the growth of my competencies. I became a better psychotherapist and clinical psychologist by integrating these roles.

Simultaneously exercising the roles of practitioner, trainer, and supervisor also allowed me to shape a clear vision of what the structure and curriculum of a training school dedicated to psychologists who wish to become child and family psychotherapists should look like. This vision formed the foundation of the training school that took shape last year and whose training groups began this year, with significant success.

C&B: What types of therapies, programs, or interventions do you offer, and for whom are they specifically designed?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: I offer psychological assessment services for all age categories, but what differentiates this service is that psychological assessments for children and adolescents are complex and always conducted within the context of the parent–child attachment relationship and the family system. In addition to standardized instruments such as questionnaires and psychological tests, I use expressive-creative techniques, play techniques, and methods for assessing family interactions through play. These tools provide complex and in-depth perspectives on the psychological difficulties clients present with.

I also offer integrative relational psychotherapy and play therapy services, individually or in groups, addressed to children, adolescents, parents, families, the parent–child attachment relationship, as well as adults within adult therapy.

In recent years, I have worked extensively with parents, offering relational parental counseling, a therapeutic process that means much more than psychoeducation or parenting advice. It supports parents in understanding and sustaining themselves better in this role, starting from the roots of their own experiences of being raised and from the relational model in which they currently function.

For my fellow professionals, I offer professional training, supervision, and mentoring services, especially for those who wish to specialize in therapeutic work with children, adolescents, parents, and families.

C&B: How did the APRICAS Association come into being, and what motivated you to create a space dedicated to training psychotherapists for children and families?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: The Association for Integrative Relational Psychotherapy of the Child, Adolescent, and Family System – APRICAS – was legally established in 2025, but its roots lie in my entire formative journey and in the often solitary and self-directed path of becoming a psychotherapist for children, adolescents, parents, and families. Although I completed numerous training programs both nationally and internationally to specialize in this niche, it required significant effort, mistakes, and sometimes detours before reaching the therapeutic interventions best suited for my clients.

This difficult path was largely due to the lack of a coherent and structured therapeutic model from the beginning. I had to constantly test, add new elements to the initial model, and reformulate it each time I completed a new training. This continuous recalibration inevitably brought confusion and lost time. However, from this intense process emerged a profound clarity about what a well-constructed training program should look like: how it should be adapted to the early years of practice of future child and family psychotherapists and what concrete tools should be offered to ease their work and reduce the confusion specific to this stage, while maintaining high therapeutic quality from the very first cases.

Later, during the years in which I supervised psychotherapists in Romania trained in various therapeutic approaches, I observed the limits of many existing training programs on the Romanian market. This experience further clarified what a solid and coherent training program should contain – something that materialized in the current structure of the long-term training offered by the APRICAS Association. The program teaches psychotherapists to work with at least four types of clients associated with child therapy: the child or adolescent, the parents, the parent–child attachment relationship, and the entire family system, offering them a structured and coherent case conceptualization and therapeutic planning model for each type of client.

In addition, the short-term training programs include courses on specific and essential topics for therapeutic practice, with a clear emphasis on direct applicability in the therapy office, not only on theory, as still frequently happens in many specialization courses on the Romanian market.

Because these roots were clear and well structured, the right people naturally gathered around me. The Association was founded together with two fellow practitioners, Giulia Negură and Victor Toriani Gorea, and later we built a team of experienced psychotherapist trainers who accompany our current and future trainees throughout their formative process.

C&B: What does a typical day look like for you now, and which moments of the day bring you the greatest satisfaction?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: At present, I divide my time in a balanced way between my professional and personal roles. I work three to four days a week, and the rest of the time I spend at home, enjoying my role as the mother of a two-year-old boy and as a wife, as I felt the need to extend my maternity leave as much as possible.

On working days, I wake up early, handle administrative matters, and then try to settle emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually for the day through meditation or self-regulation techniques. Afterwards, I work with my clients, supervisees, or trainees, mainly online.

On the days I am at home, I wake up before my family and handle any remaining work-related matters so they do not “steal” from the time dedicated to my family. Then my son wakes up and spends some time in my arms – a moment of connection that naturally brings me back into my role as a mother. From there, we enter the daily routine and simply live our lives.

Satisfaction appears in both worlds and their specific roles, especially in moments when I access a state of gratitude for all the good things in my life: for my health, for my capacity to work on all levels, for my family, for the privileges I have built over time and for which, although I work hard, I have the strength to maintain and amplify in my life.

C&B: What values or principles guide you in what you do, and how do you apply them daily?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: My central value is continuous learning. I believe that human life has the role of offering us constant lessons and learning experiences, and our responsibility is to receive them and extract as much meaning and knowledge from them as possible.

I am also guided by adaptation, collaboration, and co-creation with others, as well as authenticity and love. As I have matured personally and professionally, these values have become an integral part of the way I function; they manifest naturally in my daily life, without the need for conscious effort or special actions to apply them.

C&B: How do you adapt therapeutic interventions for different individual needs – from anxiety or stress to emotional blockages?

Andreea Abe Adebowale: The multiple therapeutic approaches in which I am trained allow me to create individualized therapeutic intervention programs. I personalize them according to a series of variables that I call “client moderating factors” – aspects such as the client’s age, the issue for which intervention was requested, the time available for the therapeutic process, the individual’s resources or those of the system they belong to, as well as other relevant elements.

At the same time, I also take into account “therapist moderating factors,” which include my level of experience with the respective clinical issue, the most appropriate therapeutic approach, and the possibility of working within an inter- or multidisciplinary team.

Andreea Abe Adebowale’s professional journey is shaped at the intersection of clinical rigor, deep personal development, and the courage to follow her vision even in times of uncertainty. From early confusion to the clarity of an assumed mission, each stage has contributed to a strong professional identity centered on relationship, authenticity, and continuous learning.