Expressive therapy provides a range of interactive, creative arts-based, projective techniques and interventions. It draws both on the principles of psychotherapy as well as the creative experience of the client to gain insight and to achieve growth, healing and integration.
There are a few common misconceptions about the work I do with clients that I’d like to highlight and address:
First of all, it is not just for children. I have personally worked with kids from as young as 5 years old through to fully-fledged adults in senior management positions. The important thing is not your age. It’s that you keep an open attitude and park your inner critic outside the room whilst allowing yourself to create and be free to play – with the sand, with figures, with colours, with movement, with sound.
I am not a psychoanalyst, psychiatrist or clinical psychologist. I do not try to interpret the drawings or sandtrays, provide any kind of diagnosis or label based on the creation or provide clients with answers about “what they should do next” in their life. My aim is always to guide my client in the creation of something that has meaning for them, which might, in turn, allow them to gain some insight into their life situation or next steps. This may happen during the session or at a later stage as the process unfolds over a number of weeks.
It is not just for clients recovering from severe trauma. While sandplay therapy and expressive therapies have proved effective as a treatment for both trauma and mental health problems, it has also proven effective for those who are going through a life transition (post-natal, death of a beloved family member or friend, loss of a job, painful break-up of a relationship or divorce etc.) and would like to use it as a catalyst for the recovery of their sense of self.
It is not just for those who consider themselves “creative”. Creative ability is innate in humans. Sadly it often gets blocked as we grow up by the “shoulds and oughts” as we are pressured by the prevailing culture into leaving our playfulness behind. When we feel stuck in a life, or seem to have lost our sense of passion or purpose, it is often a lack of creative problem-solving that prevents us from seeing the way forward. Being conscious of your creative ability is not a requirement or a determinant in any way as to whether you will benefit from an expressive therapy sessions. In fact, sometimes, there is no activity involved in the session. My sessions are client-led; therefore, the decision of taking part in an expressive exercise is up to the client. Naturally, I will usually suggest an option for creative expression when I sense it might be helpful for my client.
The representation created facilitates further communication. It allows the creator to access parts of themselves that are not so easily accessible otherwise. As an expressive psychotherapist, I refer to these parts as coming from the sub-conscious or even the unconscious. Whatever is created, in the sand or on the page, reflects back at us both – you as the client and me as the therapist – and brings us into a deeper space, a sacred space ready to be gently and reverently explored and seen. It is this projective nature of expressive Sandplay and Symbol Work that affords us an opportunity to see ourselves outside of ourselves and to reflect upon what is seen.
This three-way relationship, between client, therapist and the creative process is a key element of the work. Clients often experience this approach as less threatening as it provides an indirect platform for discussion rather than addressing emotional problems in a straightforward verbal fashion. Let’s face it: it’s usually our own thinking patterns or entrenched beliefs or habits that got us stuck in an uncomfortable place – if telling someone what to do fixed the problem, or just talking about it solved things, it most likely would have been solved long before reaching my office!
Sandplay is deceptively simple to the untrained eye. After all, what could be complicated about putting a few miniature figures in a sandtray? Perhaps adding water or moving the sand to form hills and valleys? Maybe moving the figures around and creating a narrative about what’s happening? And yet, so complex in its ability to have a profound effect on people’s wellbeing. Research has shown that it can have a profound healing effect in the lives of both adults and children. In the therapy room there will always be a tray, perhaps even two (one wet and one dry). The tray is always blue on the inside, with proportions constructed precisely to enable the person standing in front of it to observe the whole scene without moving or having to look from side to side. Why blue on the inside? To represent sky or water. Only natural coloured sand is used and preferably fine-grade. Some things are tactile and need to be experienced.
