I'm training to be an Integrative Arts Psychotherapist which means working with people's innate creativity and imagination to facilitate change and transformation.
Now I don't consider myself to be artistic - I can draw stick people and doodle and that's about it - so why do I want to work with the arts?
Have you ever felt so full of emotion you just don't know what to do with yourself? If you don't let it out, you just might burst? Or you don't have the words to convey what you want?
This happened to me the other day. I felt angry. Lots of things had happened and I'd kept them inside. I didn't want to shout at people - yet on the inside, I wanted to shout very loud - to scream in somebody's face - and yet I didn't want to do this! A sort of me-not me at play!
So what did I do instead? I let my body do the talking. How? Just as you can feel emotion in different parts of your body, I used my hand with paint to vent my frustration - and it felt good, so good - to get how I was feeling out of me and down on paper. I used charcoal, then paint to express how I felt - and my expression came from within.
Afterwards, I felt like a matador who had made his kill - victory, pride, job well done. A huge release of energy - as though I had spoken and could move on.
Carl Rogers, the psychotherapist, says it is freeing "to destroy a hated object by destroying a symbol of it". Far from being a reprehensible act, it is "responsible" because you are coming into touch with your own thoughts and feelings.
This permission to be free "to think, to feel, to be, whatever is most inward within you" is part of creativity. We have this innate ability to imagine and create, and working with the arts allows us to express ourselves from within - and to be more authentic.
I no longer feel angry. Instead I feel energised and curious to find out more about the symbolic relationship between the matador and the bull and what it might mean for me, and how I can work with the image to develop and know more of my true self!
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