As a counselor who works with children, preteens, teens and emerging adults, I constantly struggle with finding creative and engaging ways to provide therapeutic services to my clients. I have a background in art and play therapy so I am almost always found with art materials and things to play with either in my portable therapy kit or in my office. Creativity in counseling can be very crucial when it comes to making an impact on the therapeutic relationship and experience for yourself and your clients.
When you think of “the journal” you may be instantly bored by the idea of keeping one, but a visual journal is a regular journal upgraded, it’s the 2.0 version! Visual journals use a mixture of words and art; like drawings, magazine cut outs, or paintings even. They are like a diary with artistic flair. Typically a visual journal still outlines the day ro day musings of the author but might add drawings of ideas or sketches for an upcoming piece of art. Many famous artists had visual journals and used them to do initial sketches of ideas or drafts of an image they were looking at at the moment.
People have been making masks and wearing masks for all kinds of reasons for thousands of years. We wear them as a form of entertainment like in a play, we wear them to disguise ourselves like in a costume party. Famous people wear masks or disguises so as not to be recognized. Masks were worn during Greek mythology times. They are worn as tools for telling a story during a rite of passage or recreating an event that happened in the past.
Drawing or coloring a Mandala is a form of art therapy that is a very popular thing right now. There are hundreds, probably thousands of adult coloring books out there that are of mandala designs. The art of drawing them as well as just coloring them has so much therapeutic power.
What even is art therapy? How in the world does it fit with straight up couch therapy? Therapy in the old days typically was portrayed as a dark mahogany walled-in office with a therapist sitting in some kind of a fancy leather chair and a patient lying on the couch talking about their issues. The therapist is typically portrayed as an older male (think Freud) who is taking notes and asking questions. This is obviously an antiquated version of what therapy looks like. So let’s bust all the old myths about therapy and specifically art therapies.
Your kids may be having a serious case of the feels these days—from sadness and anxiety to feeling disconnected, lonely, and bored. And no wonder! While most of us are not certified art therapists, we can still incorporate a few art therapy activities to help them identify and manage their emotions.
