Creative Therapy for Adults
Creative therapy sessions offer clients an imaginative method of working through feelings and difficulties. There will be space to talk and reflect as well as creative expression. No previous experience or skills are necessary. I will offer a variety of creative methods of therapeutic work such as image making, dream exploration, story making and traditional story work, and dramatherapy and play. The therapy is based on the theories of Analytical Psychology and C.G.Jung. Impo
Working with Dreams in Creative Therapy
Dreams contain helpful information from the unconscious and I encourage clients to write down their dreams. It can also be healing to draw or paint images from them. It can be helpful to explore a dream or an image from a dream in therapy. I am not an analyst and do not analyse dreams for clients but can work creatively with dream material. In group work it can be useful to enact a dream, allowing the dreamer to direct the enactment and to observe the dream again consciously.
Image making in Creative Therapy
One way of working imaginatively with emotions and difficulties is to create images. This can be done by drawing, painting, making a collage or modelling in clay/plasticine. The image may represent a feeling state or be an imaginative representation of a problem or life situation. Images may also be taken from dreams. You do not need to be 'good' at art or to create 'perfect' pieces. Finding an image for an emotion or difficult situation can help to create some distance from
Using Stories in Therapy
I use traditional stories, myths and fairytales and sometimes children's stories with groups and individuals. Children understand and enjoy the language of story and stories can help them to safely explore difficult themes. Teenagers and adults may be able to recognise aspects of themselves and their lives in traditional stories and use them to creatively explore problems. C.G.Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, proposed that traditional stories are an expression of the collective
Pictograms
I often use pictograms with clients as they are a great way of gaining some distance from a problem and helping to see things in a new way. They are also very useful in allowing people to explain how they are feeling. I ask the client to choose several objects and to create a picture with them to show me something - maybe a difficult situation they have just experienced or a significant event from the past. We can then discuss our responses to the picture and the client may o
