Healing doesn’t always begin with words
So how, exactly, does creativity transform therapy?
Sometimes healing begins with an image, a metaphor, or by finally feeling safe enough to express what has lived inside us for years--whether through artmaking or with words.
Creativity takes courage. With art therapy, we create space for this exploration in a safe, compassionate environment, where all parts of you are welcome—including the parts that feel messy, uncertain, or afraid.
You do not need artistic experience to benefit from creative expression in therapy.
When healing doesn’t begin with words, there's . . .
Art Therapy Across a Series of Sessions or Contained in a Single Session
THERAPEUTIC-THEME ARTMAKING
Explore a therapy theme (including identity work) in the same artwork (a painting, mixed media or sculptural piece) over a series of sessions.
PROJECT PROMPTS TO EXPLORE PARTICULAR PROBLEMS
Get to know neglected or intimidating parts of yourself by creating collaged parts cards, an inside-outside mask, or a combination abstract self-portrait (without words or representational images) and self-image translation (using words and recognizable images). Access both your broken parts and your wholeness with a broken-bowl/kintsugi-repair project. Reclaim your life story by altering a book, where you write over the story given to you and create your own visual narrative.
DEPICT CURRENT FEELINGS--USING LINEs, SHAPEs, COLORs, and TEXTUREs
Using a variety of art media and different surface/"grounds," we mindfully explore your own internal experience of the materials, or we can create your own visual language for emotions by having your create abstract "keys" to map particular emotions while listening to different types of music. Other ways of incorporating art include rhythmic regulation through painting or channeling charged energy into creating Zentangles or using coloring sheets.
Integrating Art (or not!) with Talk Psychotherapy
TRAUMA-INFORMED TALK THERAPY
We all have different ways we adapted to our childhood environments--whether emotionally disconnecting, people-pleasing, becoing perfectionistic, and so on. I help clients internally explore the patterns that might be getting in the way of what they’re really wanting for themselves. This helps them have more self-awareness, self-compassion, and more choice around how they show up in their life and relationships.
ALTERNATING TALK AND ART
If you are someone who doesn't have a lot to process each week, we can alternate one week of using trauma therapy to identify what you are wanting in your life (or what is blocking you), and the following week, we can use art to creatively explore the desire or block you identified. If you are someone who DOES have a lot to verbally process each week but want to incorporate regular art, alternating art and talk might be best done with twice-weekly sessions.
CUSTOMized Weekly
We see where you are in a given week, and, together, we decipher what might be most supportive in the moment.
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