Final Blog Post-Art Therapy Session

For my final assignment, I met with one of my clients. For confidential purposes, I'll call her Kelly.  She is a 20 year old junior and sees me at the college counseling center where I am placed. We have been meeting once a week for almost two months now.  She has been struggling with anxiety issues and I thought it would be interesting to see where an art therapy directive would take her.

At the beginning of our session, she clearly had some things she needed to get off her chest about relationship issues we had been talking about for the past few weeks. I felt as though coming out with an art directive right away would not have been the best thing since she is very much a talker and needs to get it out right away.  Although, it would've been interesting to see how the session would've been different if I had introduced the directive as we were sitting down to start the session. 

After we finished talking about what was on her mind, I asked if she would be up for doing an art therapy exercise and she immediately agreed.  I said that she could choose any color paper she wanted as well as any materials. Unfortunately, I did not have much to offer material wise.  I had a set of oil pastels and a 24 pack of colored pencils along with a few sheets of colored paper. However, she did not seem to mind.  The directive was to make an image that either tells a story, expresses a feeling, allows you to be/meditate/play with the materials or depicts a relationship. I told her she would have 20 minutes to complete it. She took a few seconds to think and started in on the work.  Kelly grabbed a beige piece of paper and drew two blue lines with a colored pencil--one straight and one squiggly.  She then started coloring in between the two lines ​with a​ dark blue colored pencil. After a minute or so of coloring, she said "So how was your Thanksgiving?...Oh, am I not supposed to talk while doing this?"  Honestly, I was not really sure what to say and told her that it was fine.  Granted, I was a little nervous so maybe she was doing it to make me feel comfortable.  However, I think she was a little nervous also and I wanted her to feel comfortable. And now that I am reflecting on this, I should've asked her if she would feel uncomfortable if we didn't talk rather than assume. 

As we continued the session, she colored in the space below the blue section with a light brown. That's when I started to see a beach.  I didn't say anything about it though. I then noticed her grabbing a light blue color from the oil pastels. I am not sure if this is right, but I am wondering if she started to feel more comfortable in what she was doing as she was experimenting with other materials. She also started talking about childhood at that point.  This action/choice of materials could illustrate her unconscious delving into her childhood. She then picked up the yellow pastel to create a sun and, as she was coloring in the yellow circle, realized that it was now green because the yellow was mixing with the blue pastel.  She was pretty upset with herself for that and wished she had made the sun first.  Then, she took the white pastel and made little squiggly lines on the water part. After she finished those, she stopped talking, looked at her paper, held it up and said she was done. 

​She then immediately volunteered that the picture was a beach and it was portraying her relationship with her mom.  She said, "You know when you write something in the sand and the shore comes up and washes it away? Well, that's how I feel about my relationship with my mom. No matter what I do, say, or how I mess up, she loves me anyway. She just lets it wash away. I don't know what I would do without her unconditional love."  I reflected how important it seems her mom is to her.  This opened up a whole conversation about how her relationship with her mom changed years ago after she found out her mom almost miscarried her a number of times.  It was a huge risk for her mom to continue with the pregnancy but she did anyways.  After years of feeling "like her mom hated her," knowing that her mom did this for her life completely changed their relationship.

I also pointed out that I noticed the varied length in lines as she was creating the water and how I was not sure what the white squiggles were.  She said that when she went to an island on a ​past ​vacation, the waves were very calming to her because they weren't very big. They also had foam at the break of each wave. 

She said that she really enjoyed this exercise and felt good except for the fact that she can't draw very well. She disclosed how much she does enjoy drawing but never does it because she doesn't like how it comes out. This definitely illustrates that she is very hard on herself.

I gave her the choice of taking the piece home with her or ​leaving it in my office.  She said she would take it home and hang it up. I suggested that maybe, if she felt up to it, she could show her mom as I'm sure she would appreciate it. She agreed and left. 

In reflecting on this session, there were a few things I wish I had done differently.  For one, I wish I had asked her if she would feel comfortable leaving the piece here so we could talk about it again. I feel as though there was more we could talk about, however the session was ending because the first half was spent talking. The other things I wish I did differently were not talking during the artwork as I mentioned above, providing more materials and proposing that we start the session with artwork.  It may not have worked out this time.  However, in another session with her, I would like to try starting with the art right away and seeing if she will focus more on the art itself as I think the talking may have interrupted her creative process.  Overall, it was an interesting session and I definitely look forward to seeing where it will take us next time if she agrees to doing another directive.