Individual therapy (sometimes called “psychotherapy” or “counseling”) is a process through which clients work one-on-one with a trained therapist—in a safe, caring, and confidential environment—to explore their feelings, beliefs, or behaviors, work through challenging or influential memories, identify aspects of their lives that they would like to change, better understand themselves and others, set personal goals, and work toward desired change.

 

People seek therapy for a wide variety of reasons, from coping with major life challenges or childhood trauma, to dealing with depression or anxiety, to desiring personal growth and greater self-knowledge. A client and therapist may work together for as few as five or six sessions or as long as several years, depending on the client’s unique needs and personal goals for therapy.

 

Adults and Expressive Arts Therapy?

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Expressive arts therapy combines psychology and the creative process to promote emotional growth and healing. This multi-arts, or intermodal, approach to psychotherapy and counseling uses our inborn desire to create—be it music, theater, poetry, dance, or other artistic form—as a therapeutic tool to help initiate change. The difference between expressive arts therapy and art therapy is that expressive arts therapy draws from a variety of art forms, while art therapy tends to be based on one particular art form.

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In expressive arts therapy, clients use multiple senses to explore your inner and outer world through the experience and creation of different art forms. The play therapist helps clients to communicate feelings about the process and accomplishment of art making, with the creative process highlighting or bringing forth new insight to presenting problems. The therapeutic work is based on the creative process, not on the final result, and it is not necessary to have a background or training in the arts to benefit from expressive arts therapy. Throughout the process, clients are introduced to different ways to use nonverbal language of creativity to communicate inner feelings that were not previously available to the client by simply thinking or talking about them.