The Body Tells the Story: Using Art to Facilitate Children's Narratives

Abstract

This column is designed to underscore relationally based creative interventions used by counselors and psychotherapists in their practices. Our intention is to provide examples of novel, innovative ways of working with clients in their efforts to deepen self-awareness and their connections with others. Although the interventions within this column will be presented in a linear "how-to" manner, an essential premise of this column is that interventions submitted for publication have a contextual and relational basis. Basic to this column is the therapeutic focus of working through latent hurts and impediments to our clients' health and happiness. Client goals generally involve creating the requisite emotional space needed for genuine relational choice for connection to manifest. If you have created a useful therapy tool, or if you have adapted an existing creative tool that you would like to share with readers, please follow submission guidelines in the author information packet available at This article illustrates an art activity for use in psychotherapy with children or adolescents. The purpose of the activity is to utilize creativity to increase problem solving for child clients and to allow their narratives to expand therapeutically. The processing of the activity allows the art to be transformed into language, thereby involving discursive (linguistic) as well as non-discursive (imagemaking) symbolic coding systems. The activity is theoretically and therapeutically flexible, as it can be used with rapport building, narrative work by allowing clients to tell their stories and externalize their problems, and trauma work by utilizing attachment of feelings to the child's physical self.

A Structural/Strategic Lens in the Treatment of Children With Obesity

“…One such activity could involve having the child draw an outline of his or her body and then use various art materials to decorate the inside of his or her body with images, words, or other symbols that represent him or her (Hecker, Lettenberger, Nedela, & Soloski, 2010). With the child's permission, the therapist then could share the image with the rest of the family as a way for them to better understand how the child feels about himself or herself, both related and unrelated to his or her obesity.…”

Foster Care Chronicles: Use of the Arts for Teens Aging Out of the Foster Care System

“…As a means of communication, stories can be a comfortable way for youth to discuss stressful issues and work through solutions. The arts (art, music, and drama) as incorporated into adolescent therapy are important tools through which teens' voices can be heard, social skills can be improved, and problem solving can be facilitated (Davis, 2010;Hecker, Lettenberger, Nedela, & Soloski, 2010;Lentz, Hoffman, & Dominguez, 2010). White and Epston (1990) contended that many theorists and researchers have acknowledged the positive use of art and play activities when working with youth.…”

Expressive Arts for Grieving Youth: A Pilot Project

“…Program Activities. Creative peer group activities have been found to assist grieving teenagers to reduce feelings of isolation, access support from others, explore ways of coping, validate, and normalize grief, maintain connections with their loved one, and provide a safe space for expression of grief [49]. In the study by McGuiness and Finucane [34], positive outcome statements from participants reflect the power of expressive arts to support grieving youth: 'I have learned to be more expressive and allow myself to feel sorry and sad whenever I want to -tried to shut grief off' and 'I don't feel so alone and lost, it has made me feel stronger and I feel we have united like friends when you most need a friend'.…”