Art as Advanced Play
Art therapy offers people the ability to play. Play is linked with a sense of safety. We need to feel safe to be creative and spontaneous, and thus to play. I have also found that increasing play can increase a sense of safety: it's like they impact each other. For those whose sense of safety is compromised by trauma, art offers a way to engage playfully with the world that is not as threatening as direct interaction with others.
I have had many young clients who come from war and are not able to play with peers, make friends, or joke around with adults. They perceive danger everywhere after a lifetime of danger being everywhere. I believe play is a developmental imperative for children, and if play is not possible children don't learn how to think creatively and build relationships with others among many other things. Stephen Porges' work on neuroception - the nervous system's automatic scanning and assessment of danger - is the founding research in the idea that trauma affects our ability to socially engage due to a diminished sense of safety. Check out: http://stephenporges.com Porges found that when we perceive danger around us, our ability to engage socially is inhibited at a nervous system level. Many forms of play include engaging socially with others, and as a therapist it is hard to encourage non-social interactions in a therapy session. I have found that an exception to this is art making. Art-making can be a form of parallel play, the earliest form of social play children engage in. Children and adults can play through art making without having to engage directly with another person. This can start the process of feeling safe within play.
I have also found that it is more tolerable for such clients to have a barrier between us when we do interact, and a clay sculpture or a drawing seems to be an acceptable barrier. We are able to talk about the sculpture instead of the client. We are able to explore the client's world through a collage rather than talking about his/her thoughts of the world. The focus is on an object the client made rather than the client herself/himself. As most people identify to some extent with art they make, it is an ideal bridge to tolerating direct interaction.
I have had many young clients who come from war and are not able to play with peers, make friends, or joke around with adults. They perceive danger everywhere after a lifetime of danger being everywhere. I believe play is a developmental imperative for children, and if play is not possible children don't learn how to think creatively and build relationships with others among many other things. Stephen Porges' work on neuroception - the nervous system's automatic scanning and assessment of danger - is the founding research in the idea that trauma affects our ability to socially engage due to a diminished sense of safety. Check out: http://stephenporges.com Porges found that when we perceive danger around us, our ability to engage socially is inhibited at a nervous system level. Many forms of play include engaging socially with others, and as a therapist it is hard to encourage non-social interactions in a therapy session. I have found that an exception to this is art making. Art-making can be a form of parallel play, the earliest form of social play children engage in. Children and adults can play through art making without having to engage directly with another person. This can start the process of feeling safe within play.
I have also found that it is more tolerable for such clients to have a barrier between us when we do interact, and a clay sculpture or a drawing seems to be an acceptable barrier. We are able to talk about the sculpture instead of the client. We are able to explore the client's world through a collage rather than talking about his/her thoughts of the world. The focus is on an object the client made rather than the client herself/himself. As most people identify to some extent with art they make, it is an ideal bridge to tolerating direct interaction.
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