The power of art therapy and young adults

A profound journey for therapist and client, centred around the gentle power of art therapy…

I am an art therapist, and work with everyone from children to people at the very end of their lives – some of my work is at a dementia specialist unit at the NHS.

People tend to seek out art therapy after having tried several other therapy modalities first, but they can still take their time to sink into it. Art therapy is often something people are wary of – hampered by the complex feeling that one needs to be “good at art” to attend.

But actually, art therapy is simply a modality where we don’t focus on talking.

Talking about ourselves and our feelings is something that can feel confrontational, making it limiting for many.

Making art, however, diverts the feeling of being interviewed or interrogated. There need not be eye contact or a face-to-face sitting arrangement. I mean, how stressful is it to want to express feelings, but not know where to look or what to do with our hands, or even find the words, let alone land on a starting point! And to top it all, this is a paid arrangement in front of a stranger!

So let’s take a deep breath, and take the time that is needed, and we’ll start by drawing together.

I want to share a journey that I am taking with a young adult, and her exploration of self as she enters adulthood.

This young adult chose art therapy after experiencing several other therapy modalities and not feeling understood. I admit, I felt anxious about building a therapeutic alliance with a teenager. I was certainly never the coolest kid on the block and spent most of my adolescence never really feeling accepted by the in-crowd. My adolescence seemed eons ago. However, I was very impacted by how young this young adult felt in my therapy space.

Several sessions would go by where she barely said a word, but appeared to fall into a flow state with her creation. Her artwork transformed from anxious or stressful subject matter to something she reflected on as “liking”, something beautiful. As these mostly silent transformations occurred in my space of holding, she opened up more and more. The trust was growing. She felt safe with me. She told me this.

This is when I started to notice a shift in who I was in her therapy space, and I could not deny a sense of nurture and mothering. She came in underdressed for the weather, and I sat her closer to the heater. She came in with wounds. She came in sleep-deprived. She came in asking for advice that ethically I couldn’t give. She came in earlier and earlier until I had to set a boundary on the session times. But what was amazing was that, as a frequent college absconder, she came to her sessions every single week.

I then found myself on a course exploring my own inner child. Through this work, I recognised the fragile child in my client. The sense of mothering was so strong in one session that I literally found myself reading her a Russian fairy tale while helping her to sew. She showed me her self-harm wound, which saddened me as she’d abstained from this for several months. But she showed me, and I could feel she was more comfortable showing me than her own mother. The trust was palpable. My stomach flipped, but I told her how to take care of the wound, and we sewed the last part of her felt project together, the escaping cotton wool innards now sealed inside.

I went home and reflected on this session.

Had I wanted more attentiveness from my own mother? I had been focusing on self-love, and on being gentle and kind to myself in place of telling myself to “pull it together”. I never wanted to be a mother, but instinctually mothering is present. I am an aunt and am surrounded by family members with children.

I care deeply about all my clients. I always want the best for them. Was I healing my inner child through acknowledging the fragile child within this adolescent? I want her to be strong, resilient, independent and find herself through the labyrinth of adolescence to adulthood.

It’s no easy journey. When can you truly admit feeling like an adult anyway?

I vie for uniqueness, authenticity, creativity, and not losing the inner child through a common infection called adultitus.

I say, grow with wisdom, but never leave sight of imagination and creativity. Nurture your inner child. This child will always be there in many guises, and this child is your rich, rich life source.

Kirsten Holmes, is an art therapist at The Practice Rooms, Exeter