Art Therapy
Art therapy can help with an array of problems. We have helped children and teens with cutting, depression, anxiety, trauma, loss of a loved one, divorce, bullying... Art therapy is an amazing tool that can help with so many difficulties.
Art therapy can be a wonderful way for children, teens and families to explore and process through issues without relying solely on talking. Art includes, but is not limited to painting, sculpting, casting objects, drawing and collaging. The use of art often enables the individual to feel more comfortable and less defensive often yielding a deep and meaningful therapeutic experience.
Examples from Gabrielle Anderson, Director
When I treat clients with eating disorders, I often try to incorporate art therapy into the therapeutic experience. An example of art work in the middle of therapy with an anorexic girl may include the teen drawing a picture of how she feels about being thin and drawing a 2nd picture of how she feels about gaining weight ("getting fat"). Again, like the example on the play therapy page, she color codes it with feelings for each picture. Together, we talk about the fear she experienced having to go to various health specialists due to her low weight as well as her fear of being "fat again".
Sometimes kids feel chaotic and anxious and really don't understand why. An older child struggling with many overlapping feelings, may be asked to define his top 6 most frequent feelings. He would then be asked to graph his feelings with playdough, putting a 3-d type dimension to an ordinary paper/ink graph. This type of art therapy activity gives the child and myself both a visual of how much he experiences each feeling and gives us an opportunity to explore each one separately. Breaking down the overwhelming emotions into small singular feelings helps us make sense of the chaos and begin to balance it with calmer more peaceful feelings.
Art therapy can be a wonderful way for children, teens and families to explore and process through issues without relying solely on talking. Art includes, but is not limited to painting, sculpting, casting objects, drawing and collaging. The use of art often enables the individual to feel more comfortable and less defensive often yielding a deep and meaningful therapeutic experience.
Examples from Gabrielle Anderson, Director
When I treat clients with eating disorders, I often try to incorporate art therapy into the therapeutic experience. An example of art work in the middle of therapy with an anorexic girl may include the teen drawing a picture of how she feels about being thin and drawing a 2nd picture of how she feels about gaining weight ("getting fat"). Again, like the example on the play therapy page, she color codes it with feelings for each picture. Together, we talk about the fear she experienced having to go to various health specialists due to her low weight as well as her fear of being "fat again".
Sometimes kids feel chaotic and anxious and really don't understand why. An older child struggling with many overlapping feelings, may be asked to define his top 6 most frequent feelings. He would then be asked to graph his feelings with playdough, putting a 3-d type dimension to an ordinary paper/ink graph. This type of art therapy activity gives the child and myself both a visual of how much he experiences each feeling and gives us an opportunity to explore each one separately. Breaking down the overwhelming emotions into small singular feelings helps us make sense of the chaos and begin to balance it with calmer more peaceful feelings.
At times, art therapy is less structured. With the confident participant, instructions may be more vague to allow freedom of interpretation and expression. Teens are often asked to paint a mondala of their life...in abstract terms or straight forward. Sometimes children are asked to take their anxiety and turn it into a cartoon character so that the child can determine how s/he feels being within proximity of it and THEN the fun part...can artistically become empowered over it. We do with art what we struggle to do in real life BUT what we do in art really does translate into real life. Artistic abilities are unimportant and irrelevant to art therapy. Artistic abilities look to skill and the end product, whereas art therapy looks to the process and the means to the end. The HOW seems more relevant than the WHAT. Click here to read a blog article written by Gabrielle Anderson. This article is about a young woman's journey through expressive therapy to help heal the wounds of sexual abuse.
