Arts Psychotherapy

What is Arts Psychotherapy?

Kerri Hay, Founder & Director
Arts Psychotherapist, Counsellor, Reiki Master, Artist

Well, put simply, it’s Psychotherapy using Creative Arts as the communication, learning and strategy tool.

People work towards a therapeutic goal with an issue they would like a better understanding of, to change a behaviour, to get a positive outcome, whether in group therapy or one to one sessions. You work with various mediums including paint, pastels, clay, puppetry, collage, sand tray, body movement, poetry and storytelling, sensory items, music, and elements of drama work to express yourself opposed to expressing only through “talking therapies”. Counselling approaches and techniques support the process of engagement with the medium, however the medium itself becomes the tool for exploration and self-discovery.

Often clients will have told a story many times and may have become very well rehearsed in the way it’s been told, even to the point where the story may have evolved slightly differently to the actual experience, giving little opportunity for clarity or insight. Using a specific medium for individual challenges or issues, a new and unfamiliar story can open up pathways allowing unconscious material, or the invisible, to become visible. Therefore, the quality and engagement process with the particular medium is paramount in exploring the new story safely and gaining possible insight.

This offers opportunity for clients to notice a possibly different perspective or understanding to aspects of the story that may be unfamiliar. This can bring a new awareness that can lead to insights that are then built on incorporating each client’s natural strengths and skills. New strategies can be learned and implemented so behaviour can be changed generating positive healthy changes now and into the future.

Clients who have difficulties with verbal communication, can engage in the process of art making by which emotional expression can be explored and achieved. This can support both children and adults with a sense of being heard, understood and relieving frustration by opening up and expanding different channels of creative communication and storytelling.

There is no need for any art experience as its not about skill but more about creative self expression in the most authentic way.

Brief insight and article into the interconnection between Arts Psychotherapy and the Quantum field by Kerri Hay Arts psychotherapy and Quantum Field

“Often the hands will solve a mystery, the intellect has struggled with in vain”
Carl  G. Jung (1875 -1961) Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst.