Art Therapy, Play Therapy, Sandtray

Service Description

Art Therapy is a distinct mental health profession that enriches the lives of individuals, families, and communities. Trained art therapists combine the benefits of applied psychological theories with creative arts processing through active art-making to address emotional, behavioral, medical and relational health concerns. You do not have to be good at or trained in art to engage in art therapy! Art therapy is particularly helpful during times of crisis, trauma, and grief because it bypasses the need for language or thinking. Instead, it enables safe and gentle emotional processing as clients engage with the art materials in raw, authentic, cathartic, and curious ways. It helps to regulate the nervous system, decrease anxiety and depressive symptoms, and even has been shown to decrease pain! Art therapy has been shown to increase insight, emotional regulation, healthy coping and problem solving. In a typical art therapy session, the client will spend time creating an image or sculpture using a wide variety of art, natural. or digital materials. Afterward, therapist and client will view and discuss the image together to develop insight and create healing. Play therapy is a distinct intervention for youth that engages their first language- the language of play- to facilitate insight and change. Even the most troubling problems can be confronted in play therapy and lasting resolutions can be discovered, practiced, mastered and adapted into lifelong strategies for health and wholeness. In sandtray therapy, client's use three-dimensional figures to create and engage in a variety of 3-D worlds. Through the use of metaphor and narrative processing, client's are able to re-imagine, revise, and re-story personal experiences and problems to find insight and lasting solutions.