Creative Arts Therapy harnesses the power of the creative process to find your way through a problem.
Emotions contained within images, characters and stories communicate deep, honest responses to situations, issues and dilemmas.
Metaphors allow us to make leaps in understanding and to quickly embody new attitudes.
Using the arts allows us to access insight from our under-used right brain, which might give us a whole new take on a situation and bypass frustrating habits of thought.
The Creative Arts in Counselling
Sometimes we talk our way around things that our inner selves already know.
The creative process is a way to access the wisdom that you already have.
This is an option, not a requirement. We can just talk if that’s what you prefer. But there are so many ways to be creative – each as individual as the person creating. Come and find a creative process that is comfortable and insightful for you.
What does that look like?
You can bring music, dreams, stories, or images as starting points for sessions.
You can use role-play, story-telling, journalling, music or artwork to look at issues as they come up.
We could use masks, puppets, or songs to further explore feelings and thoughts.
You and your creative arts therapist work within the metaphor that you establish, exploring strengths, obstacles, and new ways forward. Working through a story, image or metaphor can free your mind to jump to a new level of understanding.
- Discover fresh ways of relating to issues and people
- Express inner conflicts and bring them to a new balance.
- Try on and rehearse new attitudes and behaviors
- Achieve desired change and resolution of issues
- Find an increased sense of meaning in your life
Clarity about our feelings lets us communicate and control them better. Better awareness and acceptance of our own strengths and hopes, obstacles and limitations helps us adjust our expectations and set realistic, achievable goals for ourselves.
Kids and Creative Arts Therapy
Because children and youth have not yet fully developed their higher verbal and cognitive abilities, they can really benefit from therapeutic activities that allow them to use movement-based, musical and image-based strengths. These playful, creative activities let them express emotions, explore possibilities and find their way to a nonverbal analysis and understanding. Creative arts therapy is an extension of the way children naturally use play to clarify and work troublesome situations out – but facilitated by a trained therapist.