Hi SD,

I don't have any experience with this either, but coincidentally, have also been thinking a lot on the subject this week.

I'm currently finding I want to deepen my experience with journaling, to hopefully benefit more from it and gain more insight. I journal a lot but it can tend to be superficial and repetitive. So I've thought about varying my techniques and trying what they call art journaling. . . problem is I'm not very artistic either. But I started looking online for ideas and discovered that there are a lot of people that have posted youtube videos of their art journals, also videos of techniques and tutorials for art journaling. I ended up feeling excited at the possibilities for creative expression, even with a highly limited skill set , and wanting to go acquire some supplies.

I spent half an evening watching youtube videos on art journaling. For some reason this one stood out to me as particularly inspiring, but there are many others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUSNDgVtpPs It just looked so relaxing to work on, and I really liked how it turned out.

Hope this is of some use or interest to you. Best of luck!

Hi again Somedays,

Was thinking a little about my initial reply to you and realized. . . art journaling is probably not the same as art therapy. lol. So what I wrote may have been completely irrelevant to your question, on the other hand, I think art journaling would likely feel therapeutic.

I really wish I knew more about this. Hope you get some more replies soon as I am curious as well.

((SD)) I'm sorry, nothing that I can offer to help. I just wanted to let you know I'm in a similar boat. I had a meeting with the group T about a group I'm going to join and she mentioned how we'll do some expressive arts therapy and my stomach clenched. I think I'm creative, but not in the sense where I can pick up a pencil or a paintbrush and just draw. And especially not without being very harsh on myself. All I know is that people say that you should just try to draw whatever comes to mind, draw whatever feels right. I haven't ever been able to do that, but I also haven't given it that much effort. I don't know anything, but maybe you could just think about how particular feelings might look as colors and just draw some colors on a page. Maybe that would help you get started.

((Hugs)) Good luck!

Hey Hic, - i looked at the youtube and yes I realised it was art journalling - was very impressed but it wasn't exactly right - so I then went googling and saw some other youtubes of basic art therapy stuff. It got a bit too much for me and so I left it.

But, I think i got enough information from your suggested one and the ones I looked at and it has been simmering in my mind ever since. I know I have been thinking about it and processing it without confronting it head on. So that is a great thing for me.

I am scared of it I think - and I wouldn't know where to start. T knows this and said it could be something I do on my own to help me put colour to feelings - so when I read Draggie's suggestion - that really hit home to me. Colours do speak to me - so i like the idea of colour of some type. As I am re-reading what everyone wrote - some images are coming to my mind. Like I could do 1 page called ANGRY - and it be lots of little drawings, doodles, colour of what anger is and then pick another feeling. I have about 4 feelings that I know now - so i could do that. I hadn't thought of that until I read about Draggie's description = ie spiky thing in a ball and Drags inside it. Once I get started with someone's idea - i can then start to think.

Yeah Kashers = man i read what you wrote how people say "just draw whatever comes to mind" - yeah right that fills me with utter terror. What comes to mind is that this is way too hard and confronting for me - so why don't i just dissociate my way out of this terrifying task and go into numb land.

I am sure that is NOT the objective of it all.

So yeah your suggestion of feelings as colours - as soon I read that - it reminded me that T had said that to me. Had totally forgotten..... Yeah maybe that is where i start.

I just feel so self conscious of it.

The other thing I thought of when I re-read this post is that I do take a lot of photos of flowers and colour. I could also make a collage of all my colourful digital photos and put them on 1 page - that would be my happy page..... I also take photos of every black cloud I have ever seen.....ha ha... that could be an anger page. I hadn't realised that before - i either do 1 or the other.

I could even do it on an Ipad or something and take that in. God, that just brought up a memory of the last session with T - which was a very difficult one in which I totally zipped off into no man's land (so i forget a lot of it) - I think she did suggest we look at things from an Ipad together in session or something. Now i can't remember.

I can see how the art therapy stuff is good for people like me - who do not have language to express things, but for me it is just terrifying. I have spent my life keeping everything closed and contained and my T wants the unknown to come out??? I can't remember a huge amount of my life for a reason - not sure I want to remember stuff now.

If anyone thinks of any more things - pls post.
Somedays

Yeah, i think maybe colours is the first step. Will talk to T about it today maybe.

Hey there SD, did you manage to talk to your T about the art therapy? I find it interesting that she suggested art therapy to you, but as something you go off and do on your own. I like the suggestions the others on this thread have given (I also really liked the link to art journalling, gave me some ideas of my own.)

Thought I'd chip in because I did a stint with an art therapist once, years ago. We did things like make and play with puppets (obvious candidates to play out theatrically various family and relationship dynamics), do sand tray play, used a lot of symbolic stuff (real buckets for dumping emotional rubbish in, that sort of thing), collages, montages, using paintings, postcards, photos in a range of different activities.

I must say though that art therapy as such tends to work with an art THERAPIST. That is, someone who can suggest activities, join in with them and then debrief afterwards, so that it really is 'therapeutic'. Which is not to say it can't be therapeutic when you do it alone, but I find that when I'm messing about with arty type stuff by myself I always pre-empt what I'm thinking feeling or wanting to express so it can defeat the purpose of doing it.

Have you thought of actually going and doing some 'professional' art therapy as an adjunct to your normal therapy with T? Or even doing some art-based activities WITH your normal T?

Anyway that's just a few thoughts I wanted to throw out to you

LL