Tablesauce: Expressive Arts Therapy at Work
Whether you're looking to a therapist for help with chronic depression, hoping for solutions to a dilemma at work, or are wrestling with feelings that you aren't sure how to name, there are many ways to tackle your struggles. Actually, tackling those struggles is more commonly referred to as processing in therapy speak.
Mostly, clients who see me for therapy have come to talk out their feelings - to process them with words - but sometimes that's much easier said than done. Have you ever felt stuck in describing a feeling or left speechless when in crisis and wishing to be able to get that hard thing unstuck and out?
Yeah, that.
Expressive arts therapy is really helpful for some clients to bring out the words. Sometimes, the art, the movement, or the play takes the place of words entirely. It's true that some of the feelings, the traumatic memories, and experiences that are in us are pre-verbal (before you were old enough to have or know the words), and that some of them are simply non-verbal (you're too unable to access them, perhaps having dissociated from the trauma entirely). Using non-verbal specific methods through expressive arts paired with talk therapy or by itself can help move the process along.
I get asked a lot by friends, colleagues, clients, and curious folks with lots of questions: How do you use expressive arts therapy in your work? So here's a little peek inside what I like to call Tablesauce. I'll let the video do the rest of the talking, and if you have more curiosity or are thinking of booking your first appointment to see for yourself, my inbox is open.
- Jenn Seeley