I started this blog as a personal look into the mind of someone who has 7,000 thoughts in five minutes. A place to be creative, fight demons, and ultimately share the Grace of God with someone. This article is a culmination of creativity and how I apply it in my daily life. I am a master's student receiving and MS in Clinical Professional Counseling and this is for counselors or anyone who may feel stuck in their mental health progress. Some ideas, activities, and successes that I have experienced and hopefully a conversation can spark out of this!
Parts of my life as of now are broken into three parts, my "trying" social life, my master's program, and mostly (like all young adults) trying to keep up with my Job. I am pretty blessed that I love what I do and who I get to work with 99% of the time. To summarize a long drawn out job description, my job is to travel to 10 schools and hold support groups for children age 9-18. Yes, that much of an age range, and no they don't all have the same problems. For a moment think back to how much of an awkward person you were in elementary school, a pill you were in middle school, and the "cool kid" or for me "theatre nerd" in high school.....Yup some of you remember all the happy times and the popular kid days but for the kids I see they struggle to get out of bed, bullying or being bullied, on drugs, seek attention and love, and suffer in ways that I wish no child would have to experience. Because my job is a rainbow of emotions and people I choose to take an Art therapy approach. Art therapy is defined as art in therapy....what a concept right? It may seem silly to draw anxiety, paint a consequence, or play a board game but the funny thing is it works!!
My mission in this job is to let the kids have a safe space to have fun, form connections, and most importantly not feel like they need to be "fixed". Therapy for me growing up used to be "something for crazy people" and my whole life I felt so bad about who I was because I "needed" to ask for help. BUT GUESS WHAT?! It's okay to ask for help. In my opinion, it makes someone stronger and happier when they ask for help. For whoever is reading this that has a negative stigma on mental health I ask that you take a second to try again or reach out to someone in the field that takes a different approach because, it is so worth it, YOU are worth it. I am not here to convince you to go see a counselor or even finish reading this but I wanted to share some of the things that I have seen work in my schools.
Each week I bring in a topic for the children. Since I am just starting out it is nice to have a plan and options for those times when group is silent or no body wants to be there. At the bottom of this article I will attach pictures, exercises, and links that I have found so helpful as a counselor who is stuck and not wanting to demonstrate the typical "talk therapy." Let's face it most kids do not want to sit and talk for an hour, they'd much rather play question jenga or kick a soccer ball, heck I would rather do that. If you're not a counselor these activities are things we as adults can benefit from too. I do every activity the kids do and it helps my mental health too. It helps me feel connected to a time when I was a kid who didn't put as much pressure on myself or care what others thought. When I could color outside the lines, make the sun green because I felt like it, and could play a game without it being "a waste of time." The benefits of art therapy and the research surrounding it show that our brains are activated on both sides! This increases memory cognition, releases endorphins, and allows our body to move from flight and fight response to a calm and accepting state. From here we can talk or dive into what is really going on.
By working on our own art we can in turn contribute to God's masterpiece of this place called earth. Because with out art the earth would just be eh.
I could talk about this all day but I really want this to be a platform of sharing and spreading awareness of what a wonderful tool putting the ART back in TheRApy can be, so here it goes:
Links:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/: The coping skills card game, friendship books, and more are 5$ or less and download right to your computer
https://www.childtherapytoys.com/?msclkid=32b8158ddc891a0cb4df49de818aec05&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=**LP%20-%20NonTM%20-%20Play%20Therapy&utm_term=Play%20Therapy%20Toys&utm_content=Play%20Therapy%20Toys: I have bought so many activity balls and icebreaker games, there is also a teen action and consequence game that is amazing.
https://www.pinterest.com/paige2494/mental-health/: What is a blog without a link to pinterest? Here are all the ideas below compiled to one folder