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Eating Disorders and Art Therapy - Communicating without Words |
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Written by Karen Hardess
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Page 3 of 4 The real battle during the sessions was to learn to deal with these emotions in a creative way. There was a difficulty, though, since my low self-esteem filled me with the concern that, rather than self-inflicting the anger and pain which I had done in the past, I was now afflicting others with the distress I felt. However, my art therapist guided my through my difficulties and together we built up a visual dictionary with which to communicate my feelings. One of the greatest assets of art therapy for me was that I had a creative space in which to explore my emotions. Due to my lack of self-confidence, I had felt unable to share emotions, because I did not believe that they were important....Finding this visual language not only helped me to communicate, but this time and space actually dedicated to them gave my emotions an importance....Putting emotions down on paper also helped to make them real. No longer could I reject them as a figment of imagination, invisible and therefore unimportant, because they were actually down on paper. This also distanced them from myself and I felt more able to analyze and share their meaning. As time moved on I felt more and more confident to acknowledge their importance, to rely on their interpretations and to accept them as part of me.
Art therapy was very different from other treatments I had had. I have done family therapy and seen many psychiatrists and psychologists, so I was used to the seemingly shallowness of talk and one-way silence. Yet art therapy was a far deeper experience; tuning into the subconscious was like fumbling about in the dark. It was up to me to draw from within and I had control over how much I kept in or let out.
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