Creative Therapies

I will often invite people to experiment with using different mediums as a response to anxiety or low self-esteem. 

 

For example,drawing, giving a shape or colour or form to some of the voices in our heads can help us get to know them better, to be able to hear what they want, what they are concerned about and to find out more about their history and their role in our lives. Drawing a time line to identify the various experiences in our lives and their relationship to each other can help us to identify themes and patterns, reasons for our anxiety or depression,  or our inability to make decision.

 

Sand Tray and Five Story Cube Therapy

 

The sand tray and the five story cube offer a different way of expressing ideas, history, stories about our lives, aspects of ourselves. I have a five story cube and a sand tray and a whole selection of shells and stones, models, symbols and images, which you can place in the cube or the sand.

 

Some people love the feeling of sand and being able to mould it, For others the layers of the story cube are more useful, offering a way of looking at several different layers of ourselves at one time. We can use them to illustrate where you are now, the various aspects of yourself that you are (more or less) aware of, where you might like to be, the inconsistencies and differences you experience internally, your response to a situation.

 

The aim is to pay attention to your feelings and intuition when selecting the images. Then we can talk through what they mean to you, what they represent, the story that is unfolding. This can help us move away from words and thoughts and pay more attention to feelings and intuition. The tray or the cube is then a snapshot of where you are now and can change and develop as we work together.

 

My experience of this work is that it offers a powerful and safe way of accessing deeper feelings and memories, not relying solely on words and language.

 

The theoretical basis for this work stems from Jung and his work on archetypes, a Swiss therapist called Dora Kalff. The tray and the cube are both designed to fit within our field of vision, the space we can see without moving our head. The symbols and models used are whatever we want them to be, though we might also be curious about the archetypal meanings of some of them. The suggestion is that these methods facilitate the psyche’s natural capacity for healing, in the safe space created and facilitated by the therapist. Using the forms and symbols the images and experiences created with the tray or the cube we can become more aware of blocks to our development, of the impact of the different aspects/layers of ourselves, of the meaning of some of the stories in our lives.

Get in touch...

 

For more information on my services and how I can help you why not get in touch for an informal chat.

 

07590 107455