Art Therapy Activities for Depression, Anxiety or Grief Part 1 with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register@allceus.com Counselortoolbox you. Hey there everybody, and I'd like to welcome you to today's presentation. We're going to be talking about 30 art therapy activities for individual or group work. I have a book that's going to be coming out that will expand more upon this, but I wanted to hit the highlights because I often have people ask about different art therapy activities that they could do in group to make group a little bit more engaging. The first one we're going to talk about is the collage. I think all of us at some point or another have done an activity with a collage in one of our groups. But let's think about all the different ways that we can use collages. You can make collages on a picture. You can take multiple pictures and graphically manipulate them to create a different looking picture that has multiple different images in it. And you can do that using canva.com which is one of my favorites. It's free, so clients can use it pretty easily or, you know, they can figure out if they want to use something a little bit more in depth like Photoshop or gimp. You can make collages on bulletin boards. That's really easy. You don't need glue, you just need little sticky pins and the pictures or images or representations presentations that you want. You can make a collage on a book or a notebook cover. Back when I was in school, way back in the day, we used to have brown paper covers for our textbooks and a lot of people used to draw on those and personalize the brown paper covers. We can still do that today. People can make a collage in a scrapbook. A collage does not have to be on one particular surface. It doesn't have to be one page. It can be multiple pages. I had a good friend of mine that made a scrapbook for me for my birthday one year, and each different page was a different image or symbol or saying or something that reminded her of me. So it was really sweet and it was really touching. And our clients can do that too. People can make photo blankets if they want to, and that's just a matter of going to Canva or Photoshop or one of those places and creating a image that is a conglomeration of multiple pictures and sending it somewhere where they will print a photo blanket. A lot of photo processing places will do that. Even Like Walgreens and places like that. So that is another option. If somebody's creating a collage of all the things they're grateful for, or a collage of all the people in their life that they love, that would be something that they could do. A quilt is different than a photo blanket. When I'm talking about a quilt, I'm talking about hand sewing together multiple different swatches that remind you of something. And this is a great activity to do as a family or as a group in order to create a group quilt. When I was in Florida, we had a huge quilt that went around that survivors of crime contributed to. And each person, each survivor had their own square in the quilt. So you can see that obviously it would grow exponentially really quickly. The squares don't have to be very big. They can be little four by four squares or something. So it's easy to whip stitch. But it can be extremely meaningful because people can personalize their little 4x4 square and what survive in that case, what survival meant to them. And another place that they can do collages is in some of the online places like Canva I already mentioned, but I know of a lot of youth who have also done what I would call collages in Minecraft. They create worlds that make them happy. They create worlds that are, you know, sort of their escape place, if you will. What can you use to make collages? A lot of times we drop back and punt and we think, collage, let's get some magazines, let's cut out pictures, let's glue and yada yada. Oh, you can do so much more. You can use odds and ends like buttons and keys and material swatches and yarn. My daughter actually just took some old T shirts that she had, and she cut off the front part of the T shirt that had the words or pictures or whatever that she liked. And she stitched those together in order to make a blanket. And she then she stitched it onto a old quilt that she had that she didn't like the looks of anymore. So that's something that people can do. But even if you're just using poster board, you can do so much with objects that represent things that you are wanting to communicate. It can be dried leaves, it can be flower petals. It can be just about anything. It's just whatever the person's imagination can reach out to in order to represent whatever they're trying to communicate. You can use materials from nature, go outside, find pine cones, find, and you can even do a collage on a pine cone that can be kind of fun sometimes because if the pine cone has opened some, then it basically has little pockets that you can stick popsicle sticks or toothpicks in in order to create a three dimensional collage. Obviously you can get pictures from magazines, but you can also print them out from online. You can print coloring pictures out from online and then cut them out. You can get pictures from wrapping paper, old greeting cards, or even food bags and boxes. Think about all the cute kitties. We have cats at our house and cat food bags usually have really cute kitties on them. There are a lot of different places. If you look, you could upcycle these images. For collages, you can use paint, obviously you can use brushes and paint, or you can use finger paint. It doesn't have to be something that is super serious if you don't want it to be. You can use markers, paint, pens, stamps, or even think back to grade school macaroni and beans. There are a lot of different options from using texture and things that represent are representative to the person. Maybe their mother used to make the macaroni and cheese all the time, so they may want to use macaroni to create a little representation, little image of her in their collage. I don't know, you know, just whatever it is that works for the person. Use your creativity. What are the benefits? Well, with a lot of these, almost all of them, one of the benefits is going to be improving fine motor coordination. If you're doing collages irl, which means in real life, then people are going to be using scissors, they're going to be turning pages, they're going to be gluing, they're going to be picking macaroni out of boxes. Lots of different gripping and pinching and fine motor skills. If they're doing their collages virtually online, they're still going to be potentially typing, mousing and photo editing, which is going to require some fine motor skills. If you've ever tried to use Photoshop, you know that there can be a lot of very fine tuning in order to cut out an image or work with an image. People also have the opportunity with collages for visual expression. One of the things you can do with collages, you can split a collage down the middle if it's on a single surface and have the before and after or the inside my head and outside my head. Or you can have it on the front and back, before and after, inside my head, outside my head to give you the opportunity for comparisons. Another benefit of collages Is problem solving and creativity. We encourage people, instead of using just necessarily just using a picture of your mother, how else could you represent your mother without using her picture? What things remind you of mom? What things remind you of happiness? Some of those things that are very vague. You know, how exactly? Without just using an emoji face, how exactly do you represent happiness? And it encourages people to think. And as they start thinking about different ways they could communicate happiness in a collage, it also starts bringing out what would be triggers for their own happiness. And we can say, okay, if that represents happiness to you, how can we make that happen for you in real life? I mentioned just a minute ago, for collages, you can do the before and after. Another thing that I've done with collages is use layered collages. On the top layer, they have a picture, for example, of themselves and their significant other. And that is their goal. They want to have a happy relationship with that person. Underneath that picture, they may have other pictures or other representations that identify goals for that relationship. Maybe they want to go on a trip to Spain. So there may be a picture of a trip to Spain under there. Maybe they want to buy a house. So that can be another picture under there. And it can. Then they can start flipping through it. And under each picture show shows the goals that they want to work toward. That's helpful if you're working on a larger visualization project that, you know, the pictures would just take up an entire wall. If you help people group them like that, you can have people use a collage to identify what are the five things, for example, that are most important to you, or what makes you feel happy or sad or angry. You can do emotion collages. You can do collages where people identify all of their accomplishments. And this is another one. Sometimes you'll have ribbons. Sometimes you'll have certificates. Sometimes you may have different things. If somebody is a good runner, for example, maybe they will take their shoe and they will dip it in ink or paint and then put a shoe print their collage. Who knows? It's up to them how they want to represent it. They can have a collage that is a tribute or a memory to somebody. If they are grieving, this is a wonderful way for them to put in one place all the things that they remember about this person or this pet or this situation. And it can be a tribute to maybe. Maybe they're feeling nostalgic about the neighborhood they used to live in before they moved. Okay, so maybe they can make a collage about that. You can use the collage for positive affirmations. And with that, sometimes we use either paper strips that are torn or paper strips like you would get out of a fortune cookie and paste those, or place those either on the in real life collage or on the digital storyboard that you're using and then add other pictures and decorations. It doesn't necessarily even have to be representative of anything. It can be leaves and swirly things and whatever it is to decorate that idea. You can do a collage of a superhero. For people who have a lot of anxiety, they may create in their mind and create a collage that represents their superhero. That's going to help protect them from their anxiety. You can do a collage about friends or your happy place. My happy place is a cabin in the mountains with a babbling brook. You know, I can go on. And you want to encourage people to think about what is it that your happy place looks like and how can you create it in this. In this format, in a collage sort of format. The next way or art project you can do is sculpture. And I will tell you, I am not super artistic. So I've tried to keep these pretty basic. So just about anybody could do them. You can use clay for sculpture or play doh or salt dough. Obviously that's going to be your. The sculpture that we generally think about where you're trying to make a figure. People can make figures that are representative or they can make a vase, maybe a vase that represents the love that they hold or whatever. You can use paper mache. Not everybody wants to work with clay. They have. I get frustrated whenever I try to make vases because I can never get them to be balanced. They always look a little bit cattywampus. But if you use like a big tub, maybe the. Like a butter tub, and put paper mache around it, and then you can decorate that. That is another way to start making sculpture. You can make a pinata, obviously, again with paper mache, that you fill with ideas. Maybe you take different strips of paper and inside that pinata or piggy bank, however you want to make it, you put strips of paper or coins that have things written on them, maybe, and generally things that you want to keep inside things, treasures. What kinds of things might somebody want to nurture, to hold to safeguard things that make them happy? Positive memories. If they are having a bad day, they can open the pinata or the piggy bank and look at those positive memories that are in there. For sculpture, you can also use wadded paper Wadded newspaper. There's tons of newspaper that goes to recycling every single day. Try to get wadded newspaper and then people can ball it up and make, you know, kind of like you're making a snowman, make a head, make a body, make whatever. They can use newspaper in order to stuff clothing in order to make a scarecrow if they want to. There are a lot of different options. If you're doing this in group, you can have people bring in old clothes that they're not using anymore, especially kids clothes, because that makes a smaller scarecrow and they can work with that. You can also make multimedia sculpture. Your creativity is the limit. You can use old jars. I hate throwing away glass in our area. They don't recycle glass and I hate throwing it away. One of the things that you can do with jars, a lot of jars make great cores, if you will. For example, human form. So you can use this jar as the torso and then attach arms and then get a foam ball like you would find at, you know, any garden supply store or art supply store for flower arranging and use that for the head. Or you can wad up paper and use it for the head. Whatever you want to do. You can use felt to popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, paper towel tubes. I'm big on upcycling. If you hadn't picked up on that. Plastic shopping bags, cardboard from boxes. I break down all of my boxes, especially the ones that are just brown boxes, and we use those for all kinds of different activities and as backings for different collages. You'll see in this image, somebody made a dog out of different plastic bread bags. That's not necessarily a therapeutic activity, except for the fact that they were being manipulative with their hands, obviously, trying to make this. You see in this other picture, somebody used flower pots. The body, the torso is an upside down flower pot, and then the head is a right side up flower pot and the arms are actually made out of the little tiny 1 1/2 inch flower pots. Same thing for the legs that are strung together because, you know, they have the little hole in the bottom. So you can put string with knots in order to create sort of jointed arms and legs. Really cute idea. If somebody is into gardening or if maybe gardening makes them happy. We'll get into ecotherapy in other classes. But there's a lot to be said for people being able to do some gardening. And it doesn't have to be this huge garden. It can be, you know, three or four or five little pots of herbs. That they get to tend her. Herbs are great because they are aromatic and most herbs have positive associations with in aromatherapy, so you really can't go wrong. Benefits of sculpture, again, fine motor skills. When you're putting things together using paper mache, wadding up papers, you're using your hands, you're using your fingers, it requires creativity and problem solving. You can, even if you're doing it in group, you can have people break up into smaller groups and you can say, all right, here's an idea. I want you to create a sculpture that represents who you want to be, or I want you to create a sculpture that represents what Christmas means to you. I don't know, Whatever the topic is, there are a lot of different ways that you can use it. And that also encourages verbal communication and compromise, because when you put three artists together, nobody's going to be able to have their way all of the time. You can have them do a sculpture of a superhero. Again, they're family. And if you're a family therapist, then, or you work with a family therapist, you know that creating sculptures of their family members can be very helpful because you learn a lot about people and their perceptions of their family members by the way they make their sculptures. Who's big, who's small, who's made of paper, who's made of stone. There's a lot of different things that you can draw from it. Oh, and old medicine bottles and soda cans are also great for making sculpture. I saw one client which reminded me, I saw one client who built a self sculpture out of medicine bottles as a representation of who she was prior to entering recovery. You can have people do sculptures that remind them of a positive memory, something that they want to reflect on. Maybe they're doing a sculpture of a garden that they visited at one point that they just thought was gorgeous. Well, the benefit is when they look at that sculpture, they're going to remember that happy memory, and it's going to trigger those positive emotions. Self portrait sculptures are always a favorite because you learn a lot about people by what materials they choose to use again and how they choose to do it. And you can even have them sculpt an emotion. I want you guys to do a sculpture that represents anger. What does that look like? Puppets are the third art therapy activity that we can use. And I remember when I was doing a fitness class for little kids, I used to use puppets a lot in that class. And one day I had the puppet still on my hand, and I went down to ask the front desk about something and Instead of talking to them like two grownups would talk, the puppet started talking and the person on the other side of the desk looked at me like I lost my mind. But you know, even adults can get into the puppet frame of mind sometimes. It doesn't have to be necessarily childish. What can you use for puppets? And this is a great family activity for. For if you're working with a family that has children as well as adolescents and adults, because it can incorporate everybody. And the little kids are probably going to enjoy making the puppets more. But there are a lot of interesting aspects. And when you use puppets, it can be an alternative, for example, to the empty chair technique or other things in order to work on relationship issues, for example. But I digress. I'm getting ahead of myself. Materials for puppets, we can use socks. How many of you have orphan socks that are just laying around your house? I know we have an entire bag of socks. I don't know where they go, but they just disappear. You can make felt finger puppets and some of these you can even order offline where they are ready to be decorated. But it's not hard to make a felt finger puppet. You cut a rectangle, you flip it over and you staple it, or you glue, or you whip, stitch it shut, and voila, you've got a finger puppet that you can start decorating. Popsicle stick puppets. And generally you want to get the big ones that look like the old fashioned tongue depressors. You can get those at craft supply stores for pretty inexpensive. And then decorate them, put hair on them, get some ribbon and glue the ribbon on it and then curl the ribbon to make curly hair. Have people be a little bit whimsical. Brown paper bags, obviously we're talking about the old fashioned lunch bags. I personally don't like using these because most of the time these bags wouldn't be used unless I was using them for this. So I hate to kill the trees, but it's something, you know, it is definitely an option where the bag folds is your mouth. And just like popsicle stick puppets, you can also use toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls as your puppets and decorate those and, you know, bring them to life. Benefits again, fine motor skills. You're cutting, you're manipulating, you're gluing. Verbal communication with puppets, you don't just make a puppet and let it sit there. Once you make the puppet, you bring it to life. You have it take on a personality. You have it talk, you have it communicate. Sometimes people have difficulty communicating the things that are troublesome to them, but the puppet can do it. And that gives them a way to unhook or to distance themselves a little bit from, from painful emotions where their puppet is talking about something that happened. Or they can use the puppet, for example, and have one, one of their puppets that's them and another puppet that is somebody else in their life. And they can demonstrate challenges in communication and then they can also rehearse saying things to that person. Uses giving a voice. Puppets can help people say what they wish they could say. If the person just can't say it out loud, what would the puppet say? Have them address the anger monster. They can create an anger puppet and they can talk to that puppet and address that anger monster. You can have the puppet if it's, for example, if it's an alien in this case, what does the alien see? And have the puppet look around and talk about what the puppet sees and observes. Why not just use people's own vision and words again? Because a lot of times some of the things that they see are too emotionally charged or they don't notice things when they are putting themselves in as a puppet or isn't, you know, distancing themselves from it. They may notice more things because it's, they're not emotionally attached to it. They're not emotionally charged at that moment. You can have two puppets, the angel versus the Devil. If you're talking about decision making or conscience or guilt or you know, any of those types of feelings, you can use puppets to teach interpersonal skills. Remember back in. Well, maybe not when you were younger, but when I was younger Mr. Rogers was on the TV and you know, his puppets used to teach a lot about interpersonal skills and empathy. You can recreate the same thing with puppets in your own group or in the, in the session. And puppets can also be used to demonstrate teamwork. Whether it's putting together a group of puppets, maybe you want the, the family to all create puppets that are representative of one another. They can't create their own puppet. That could be one way to do teamwork. They could take the puppets and communicate through puppetry a challenge that they're facing as a family. They could act it out sometimes if they are acting it out as sort think of the old fashioned Punch and Judy examples, then they are going to be working together to communicate what's going on when they may not have the exact words to explain to the therapist. But there's a lot of fun stuff you can do with puppets. And I encourage people to explore using different puppets, especially the smaller puppets. Can be kept with you if the person creates a puppet that represents something that or someone that's going to keep them safe. You know, that puppet can be kept in their, in their wallet. It can be kept in their pocket so they can reach in and they can touch that puppet whenever they start feeling anxious. A gratitude tree can be done on the wall and you can do it with sticky notes on the wall. And every day somebody people come in, they have to add another sticky note or leaf to the tree identifying something that they are grateful for that day. You can do it on paper. You can create your own gratitude tree that you fill out on a daily basis, at the end of the day, maybe. Or you can do it with sticks and tags. And this is my favorite way because I like sticks. And using present tags to create the leaves however you want to do it. The big thing with gratitude trees is you're over time collecting reminders of all the things that you're grateful for. You can use paper cutouts as the leaves to hang on the tree. You can if you're doing it on a wall or on paper, you can use paint, finger paint brushes or paint pens. And you can use sticks and gift tags or cardboard leaves to create what you want to. And when you think about a tree, what else is in a tree? It's not just leaves. Sometimes somebody may want to put a squirrel in there and you know, that's cool, whatever they want to do. But that squirrel has to have something about gratitude on it. The uses of the gratitude tree are pretty straightforward. You want to help people remember things that are going right. Most of us in our life don't have everything going right all the time. However, we rarely have everything going wrong all the time. When things are going wrong, it's helpful in one area of our life, it's helpful to have reminders of the things that are going right in the other areas. It can help people remember to focus on the good things that day to get them out of that negative mind space. If they have to come into work or come into class or sit down at the dinner table and identify one thing that they're grateful for, it's going to put them back in that positive or a little bit more in that positive mindset, it's going to force them to get out of a negative mindset at least for a minute. And it can help people identify gratitude in grief. When somebody has passed on, for example, it's sad and we feel that loss, but they've left us and they've given us left us with. And they've given us a lot of things that we can be grateful for. That gratitude tree can be used to identify memories and good things that you got from that person, good things that you were taught from that person. That way, when you look at that tree, you remember all the wonderful things about that person or pet or whatever it is they're grieving that is no longer there. Wind chimes are another favorite of mine. And you can use anything that rattles, clanks, or crinkles for wind chimes. Keys, buttons, beads, silverware, preferably not your good silverware. Bamboo pipes, shells, chandelier crystals. You can go to some of the places where they take old stuff from houses that have been torn down, recycling places, and like Habitat for Humanity. And a lot of times find just random chandelier crystals and things. Bells, terracotta pots, feathers and bells, cookie cutters, decorated soda or tin cans, and soda bottle tops. The metal ones that come off the actual soda bottles, those can all be used. They all make noise. And there are tons of ways. If you just Google how to make a wind chime, you will come up with literally hundreds of different suggestions for ways to string things together to make a wind chime. Now, wind chimes provide fine motor skills and emphasize creative expression. You can use them to help people address grief. When the wind chime jingles in the wind, it reminds them of that person or situation that is no longer with them that is important to them. Encourage them. For example, if it was their grandmother, maybe they have some beads and buttons and silverware that remind them of their grandmother and they can string those together. So it's there things from grandma's treasure trove that are still making noise, if you want, want to put it that way, that are still bringing up memories in their mind. They can make wind chimes of their favorite things. Shells, for example. I love shells. And when you hang them together, they make not a jingling sound, so to speak, but it can be pleasant for people. It reminds me of the beach, which I grew up in Florida. So there you go. It can be happy memories that they have. Maybe they remember when they first started riding a bike and they had that little jingle bell on their bike that they used to jingle all the time as they were riding. Or cookie cutters can be a happy memory. Maybe making cookies with, you know, their grandparents or something, and they hang together the cookie cutters string together the cookie cutters so they jingle or they glisten. Not all wind chimes necessarily have to make noise. Some of them can be reflective and be more eye catching than sound producing stained glass. And I use the terms in quotes because making actual stained glass is intensive. There's lots of msds things that you need to worry about if you, you're working with clients and yada yada, Shrinky dinks are much easier. And that shrinkable plastic there are, I think there are a few generic ones out there. And you can just get the sheets now, you don't have to get the ones that are already drawn in ornaments, but you can. The benefit is making these. Whether they're drawing their own or they're coloring in one that's already created. It enhances fine motor skills and creative expression. You can use these for mindfulness. One of the things I like to do with the quote stained glass is they create sun catchers and they put them in the window in front of their desk or by their bed or somewhere where they're going to see it, where they can focus on that particular sun catcher while they are meditating or trying to be mindful. You can create a memory window and each shrinky dink, and that's just the term I'm going to use. I'm not necessarily endorsing shrinky dinks, but each one can represent a positive memory. Maybe when you won the track finals and when you got your first horse and I don't know what your different memories would be, but you can fill a window with different suncatcher memories and that way every time you look at that window, the sun shines through and illuminates those memories. You can also, if you don't have a window to attach them to or you don't want to, you can put them in front of LED Christmas lights and make a garland that you hang up across the ceiling that the LED lights are illuminating the stained glass. You can use them to identify things that make me feel happy. For example, that's the one I usually go with for the garlands because we're putting them up, we're encouraging people to look at them on the regular. I want them to remember things that make them happy. For me, I usually focus on flowers and furry critters because those are the things that make me happiest. You can also do things that remind me of and if they are working on grief. My mother just passed earlier this year and things that remind me of my mother are birds. She was super into feeding birds, hummingbirds and every kind of bird. Therefore, whenever I see birds, they remind me of her. You can also have stained glass ornaments that are inspirational things that you want to do or want to have. Maybe you have a stained glass ornament of what you want your first house to be like, or a stained glass ornament of a diploma if you're planning or whatever they call those caps that we wear at graduation. Anything that reminds you of a goal that you have that you can set in a place like a window. Why do I keep talking about the window and the lights? Because when it's illuminated, it attracts your attention more and it brings it forth in your mind. Flags are another one that some people really love to do. I've never really liked them myself, but I know my son, when he did it in camp, just loved his flag. He still has it hanging in his room, and it's been like four years. You can get solid color nylon flags for about 8 bucks offline. Or you can cut a king sheet into multiple flags and either sew or glue the edges so they're not frayed. You can make a flag out of a large piece of cardboard, like a large shipping box or an appliance box. Fortify the edges of boxes with colored duct tape that keeps it from getting all crumply and stuff. Once you make the flag, you can take a picture of it and print it out or have it added to the picture, added to water bottles. So each person who contributed to making the flag has a miniature version. Think of it kind of like a family crest. Benefits to making flags Fine motor skills. Again, because you're going to be painting or sewing or doing something, it encourages communication and discussion. What do we want on this flag? If you're doing it as part of a group therapy exercise, maybe it's a depression recovery group, or maybe it's a chronic pain group. What do they want on their flag? What is it that they want to wave to represent who they are as survivors of this particular condition? And it also encourages visual expression. With flags, you can identify common and complementary attributes. If you're making a big flag and each small group is in your therapy group, break everybody into little groups of four, for example, and each group of four will make a flag that represents who they are as a mini group. And then you can look at the flags and compare and contrast messages regarding what each group feels like they represent. Creating a flag enhances unity and group cohesion. Maybe you're not even trying to do anything super therapeutic. You're just trying to break the ice. And it's a great icebreaker. And it also helps with fine motor skills. It's a great thing to do if your Therapy groups or activities tend to run start at the beginning of a school semester and run all semester. It's a great first or second week activity to do to get people comfortable with one another. Flags can be used to enhance self awareness, to help people identify what they stand for. And you can do a personal flag or you can do a family flag that represents their values, what's important to them and what they're proud of. Similar to the flag is designing a family crest or a personal crest or logo. If you were going to create a logo that represented you, and you know we do this for our businesses all the time, if you were going to create a logo that represented you, what would it look like? And you can do these digitally, you can hand draw them however you want to get that image out. And then once it's created, it can be added to cups, bottles, blankets, pretty much anything you can think of. As I mentioned earlier, places like Walgreens, you can send them a picture and they will print it on the cup or the bag or the bottle or whatever it is. You can also do some at, you know, like for imprint if you're doing a big number of them. But it's really not very cost effective to use those services over something simple like Walgreens if you're only doing, you know like three for your family. The benefits of a personal crest or family crest is helping people with self reflection. What are the most important things I want to communicate because a crest is not big. What is it that I can communicate and how can I do it? If I want to communicate power, maybe I have a lion. If I want to communicate compassion, maybe I have a lion with a lamb. There are a lot of different things that you can do. Obviously I'm sticking with the furry critters, but there are tons of examples of crests and logos online that you can print out or even look at online with your group and talk about what each symbol represents to kind of get their creative juices flowing. You can use it to enhance family communication. If you're working obviously with a family, you can use it to encourage reflection on personal values and history. Not only what's important to me now, but where did I come from, what things helped me become who I am today. It can enhance verbal expression because people have to explain to the group or to you what their family or personal crest or logo means. And it also can be used as a representation that they can continue to look at as a symbol of resilience and strength. Another fun activity is a promotional flyer or Ad. You can do this online. I'll say again, canva.com is a great place because for doing minimal stuff you can do it for free, but they can do it just about anywhere. They can even do it in word or whatever. They can also do it on paper or a poster board. Or if they are somebody who really likes videos. Almost everybody has a phone now that will take videos and they can create a promotional ad with video that represents who they are. Anthony Sullivan was somebody who used to do infomercials a lot and he could sell sand to a man in the desert. Go on YouTube and you can find videos of Anthony Sullivan. Or search for something like the 10 best infomercials. Have clients watch those so they get an idea about what they might want to do. And they can promote themselves or they can promote the group or they can promote a concept. The benefit with these is it enhances verbal communication skills. They're going to make this flyer but then they are going to use it to sell the concept. It also enhances fine motor skills by having to create the flyer or ad. You can use it for self esteem building. If they're creating a promotional flyer or ad to sell themselves. What is it about you that makes you awesome? Why does somebody want to order you? That can be a fun activity. It can help people with empowerment. How can this product, that is the person, address a problem? So if I consider myself a product, how can I help people address a particular issue? And I'm trying to sell that, how can I help them improve their level of happiness? And it can be used to help people explore their impact on others. What can this product do for you? What is it that I can do for you? How do I affect you when I'm there? Do I improve your life? Do I make it easier? That's pretty much the goal we're looking for here. Or is it something that needs to be addressed like a smudge on the carpet? Photography is another thing. And that requires much less fine motor coordination in terms of drawing and things like that. You can use digital photos for your photography. That's pretty much the easiest way to go anymore. The old 35 millimeter are so expensive to get developed. Similar to collages, photography encourages critical and creative thinking skills. Now instead of just taking self pictures, we can give people the assignments, for example, to go out and take pictures of 10 things that are green, or 10 things that make them happy, or 10 things that are round. That encourages them to be more mindful. It encourages them to move because they're Going to have to move around to get it. And it encourages fine motor skills, just holding the camera and taking the picture. It also improves communication skills because it encourages people to talk about why is it that you selected those three things that you took pictures of? And there are activities online that use photography in order to promote social justice. You can search for those if you want to look at how to use photography for social justice. For the uses for photography mindful awareness pick 10 pictures of something green I said that one already. Emotions 10 pictures of something of things that make you happy. Problem solving 10 pictures of things that make you unhappy and what to do about it. Maybe litter and climate change makes them unhappy so they can take a picture of the litter and then maybe they take a picture of a recycling bin. Makes them start problem solving. It also makes them move around more. It can be used as a means of nonverbal communication for people who are either nonverbal or are withdrawn. They may be able to go around and take pictures and then start talking about the pictures a little bit. If they are not comfortable talking about themselves yet, you can do it as a scavenger hunt. And this can be fun. You take the entire group, your therapy group, maybe eight people, and you give them a list of things that they need to take pictures of so they're not disturbing anything. Maybe they need to find one thing that's green, one thing that's plastic, one thing that's sharp, however you want them to do it. And give them 20 minutes to take their phones and go take pictures of as many of those things as they can find. Whoever finds all of them first is the winner. Just like a regular scavenger hunt, you can have them practice creative expression. If they've got a fancier camera with blur and focus what they're blurring out. If they're blurring the background and focusing on the foreground or vice versa, you can have them find shapes in a picture and discuss how different shapes like different people give life depth and pizzazz. You probably wouldn't look at a picture and just see circles. There are going to be circles, there's going to be lines, there's going to be triangles. What shapes do you see and how do all those shapes contribute to the depth and beauty of the picture? You can also take a picture of something and ask people to write down five thoughts or assumptions they have about it. Sometimes we make assumptions about how people feel based on their facial expressions. Take a picture of somebody who is resting. They're not posing for the camera and you know, forgive me for saying this, but when I'm resting, my daughter says, I have a resting bitch face. And it's true. You know, I don't look like I'm in the best of moods if I am concentrating on something. So taking a picture of me when I'm concentrating on something, people may have the assumption that I'm in a bad mood. Well, that's actually not it at all. I'm probably actually pretty excited because I'm intently reading something or intently learning about something. But it helps people start exploring their assumptions and how that impacts their interaction with the rest of the world. Stepping stones are another option that you can use. I think most of us, when we were in grade school, made stepping stones or those little pie tins with our handprint in it. That's what we're talking about here. And you can either use regular stones that are not liquid, they're just. They're already stones, little slabs of stone that you find somewhere, paint on them. Or you can use the concrete or plaster and forms. You can find kits. And you know, be careful with concrete because it can burn you when it. When it's wet. You don't want to use actual concrete. But they have art plaster that you can use to make stepping stones. And they have other ways like putting gloves on that you can make different types of concrete stepping stones. Or maybe you're not even putting your hand in it. You're putting gloves on and putting stones or gems or even broken glass into the wet concrete to make a stepping stone that reminds you of something significant. Your 16th birthday or graduation or having your first kid. Stepping stones can remind you of positive things. You can also use them to show the progression in your life. The first stepping stone maybe was graduation from high school. The next stepping stone was your first boyfriend. And the next stepping stone was graduation from college. That gives a big jump there, but you see what I mean? And then you can walk along that path literally, and see your life as it has progressed and the happy things that have happened along the way. Uses. You can make stepping stones to represent achievements and goals. You can make stepping stones to represent important things in your life. And those things sort of an artistic way to look at it. If you have maybe 10 important things in your life, 10 stepping stones, if one isn't going well, it can be flipped over so you're seeing the plain back of it, but then visually you still see the other nine. And it gives impactful for people to see that, okay, I still have all these other stones, all these other Things that are going well. Each member of the family can make a personal stepping stone. And you can discuss attributes and how each stepping stone, each member of that family, contributes to the path. You can use stepping stones in grief work to create a memorial. You can create a dialectic stepping stone where it's either two sided or you can do it like the yin and yang where it's divided in half. One side is the crisis and the other side is the resolution. If somebody survived a house fire, for example, on one side they can show the house fire and what was traumatic for them and, but very memorable. And then on the other side they can show where they are now and what recovery looks like for them. And you can also do conceptual stepping stones like hope, faith, courage, you know, all of those things. What would you put on? For me, if I was doing a stepping stone to represent hope, one of the first things that I would put on it would be angel wings, a dove, and I don't know, those are probably the first, first two. And then maybe a daylily or a narcissus flower, which is the first flower of spring. I don't know yet what I would put on there. But you can use a lot of different materials to create your stepping stones. And this is one place where broken glass can come in helpful or colorful stones that you can find, or even shells. Building a home. And I don't mean a big home, I mean a little tiny image of a home. You can use Legos and markers. Each block in the Lego home represents something you need for your house to feel like a home. And on each block you write what's important. You know, love, companionship, trust, communication. I'm a therapist, so those are the ones I'm going to start with. But each person can identify what makes a house a home. Instead of just being four walls and a ceiling, you can also make a house, especially if you're working with younger people out of a cardboard box. And they can use pictures or construction paper to decorate their house. They can add flowers, they can add pictures of windows however they want to do it, and then talk about how that makes their house a home, what's important in that house to make it feel welcoming. It encourages creative expression and fine motor skills. It can help people identify and explore what and who are important in their life. It can have people start a discussion about the differences between what they need to make a house a home. And that can be within the same family or in just a regular old therapy group. Some people, for us, I've done animal rescue for 20 years. My house would not feel like a home without a mess of critters running around. That's important for me. For other people that I know, they would really rather not have animals in the house. That's not important for them. And it opens a dialogue. Jewelry, meditation beads or a keychain. I kind of lumped these all together because we're talking about beads and string. You can use materials like floss or yarn or twine. You can use beads. You can either tie the closures or you can get little closures like the alligator clips that you have on your necklace and. Or you could use finished strips of material or 1 inch, what, 1 inch wide ribbon with a button closure, for example, to make a, to make a bracelet. You can make the bracelet with the ribbon and then you can decorate the ribbon. What can you use this for? Meditation. If somebody's anxious, if they make a necklace or meditation beads that they can manipulate when they're feeling anxious, sort of like rosary beads, that may help them feel calmer. It's not necessarily about prayer. Sometimes it's about having something to do with that nervous energy. It can help people with mindfulness and distress tolerance. They can use beads of different shapes, materials and colors. And as they pass them through their fingers, they're noticing that, okay, this one is square, this one is bumpy, this one is smooth, this one is glass. And it can help them stay focused in the present moment. And it can be used for inspiration. For example, if you use the acronym stack, which stands for smart, trustworthy, agreeable, caring and kind. If you put those beads, a bracelet, then somebody, if they need a boost of inspiration or self esteem or encouragement, they can look down and see those letters and other beads on their bracelet. Graphic novels or cartoon strip bookmarks can also be helpful for people to remind them sometimes we are a meme oriented society and people can communicate a lot in one picture. Now you can do it on a digital storyboard. If you want to do it online, you can make it in a notebook. You can use cardstock, bookmarks, felt bookmarks, large popsicle sticks, or even an old wide belt that you cut down and seal the ends. Benefits like with all the others, fine motor skills, visual expression, and in this case written, written communication because they're drawing or writing something on this bookmark, you can use it for addressing anxiety. People can write out a success. They can tell a story of their success or tell a story about something that made them angry. And then you can explore that story for assumptions, omissions and cognitive distortions. If you want to, you can use it for grief. And I love narrative therapy for grief. Because when we lose something to death or something else, yes, it's not there anymore. But it doesn't mean it's gone forever because our memories of it and the way it has affected us up until now have made us who we are. And using a graphic novel, people can highlight and illustrate how their life was when that, for example, person was alive. And as they close out that chapter, what's the next chapter in this graphic novel now that that protagonist is no longer part of the cast? How is that going to be different? People can use graphic novels for mindfulness, affirmations, and encouragement of one another to enhance interpersonal skills, for example improving emotional intelligence. If they draw out a graphic novel, then they have to identify, they have to put in the nonverbals that are going to communicate that I'm angry or I'm happy or I'm sad. And it makes people become more aware of the nonverbals so they become more effective at reading other people's nonverbal communication. All right, we are going to end right there for this first half of the art therapy presentation and I will pick up with the second half in the next episode. 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