Posted by pegasus on November 24, 2004, at 12:57:48
In reply to Art Therapy » pegasus, posted by littleone on November 22, 2004, at 15:49:45
Hi littleone,
Sorry to be so late in responding. Right after I posted that, I came down with an awful stomach bug and have been in bed for three days. Much better now.
Art therapy is pretty much the same as regular therapy, except that I have the option to be making some kind of art while we talk. Sometimes I don't even do any art, and we just sit and talk like normal. Sometimes she'll suggest directions that I could go with an art project that might be helpful for working something out. Usually we'll talk at least briefly about whatever I've made at the end. Sometimes I just doodle, and we don't necessarily talk about it afterwards. Sometimes I work really hard on a project and we talk about what I'm doing the whole session. I did one piece that we decided to bring out during every session to look at for a couple of months, while I tried to figure out what to make of it, and to get used to that view of the issue.
For example, recently I've been working a lot on issues around my old therapist moving away rather suddenly. I'd brought up several things to him before he left in emails, that never got dealt with or even acknowledged. So, in my next few sessions I'm going to take some of those emails and turn them into an art project, trying to express how I feel about all of that. I think I'm going to do a collage of some sort, mixing in my recent drawings of pits and tangles with enlarged excerpts torn out of my emails. Frankly, I'm hoping that making some kind of statement in a non-verbal medium will help me express some aspects of it that don't come out in words. Like all of the howling, wordless grief.
Got kinda long there. Sorry. I *love* doing art therapy.
pegasus
poster:pegasus
thread:418631
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041123/msgs/419760.html