Art Therapy with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes Part 2

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 hey there everybody, and welcome back to the second part of 30 art therapy activities. The next one we're going to talk about is creating a worry jar or a worry box. And there are a lot of different permutations of these boxes or jars. And one of the things that we want to think about is what do boxes or jars represent? They hold something so we don't have to hold on to it. With a worry jar, you're going to take your worries. People are going to take their worries and they're going to put them out here so I don't have to carry that worry around with me. It doesn't mean it's going away yet. I'll remember it. I can handle it later. But it doesn't mean I've got to carry it around with me everywhere I go. People can choose to use old jelly jars or pickle jars. Remember if since glass isn't recycled in a lot of places, these are great things to start with. Or you can use an old pencil box. Anything that's small enough that it's not totally obtrusive in the person's environment, but large enough that they can put their worries into it. The benefits is it improves fine motor skills and self awareness and is really helpful since it's a worry jar for helping people address anxiety and distress tolerance. You might be saying, how does it address distress tolerance? Well, putting it in there is sort of like thought stopping. They're taking their worry and they're saying, I can't deal with this right now. I'm going to put it in the jar. I don't have to worry that I'm going to forget it because I have it written down, but I can put it aside for right now. And that is one of the most effective distress tolerance skills. A modification on the worry box is the happiness box. And again, you can use an old jelly jar or pickle jar. And I encourage you to decorate these. You can spray paint them, you can glue things to them, you can use paint pens on them, you can glue tissue paper on them, whatever the person wants to do to decorate it to serve as a receptacle for for their happiness or for their worries. The happiness box helps improve self awareness and it also reminds people when they start feeling down in the dumps, they can go into that happiness box and they can pull things out that are happy memories. When I was younger, we used to have photo albums and the whole old paper photo albums. And when I would be feeling blue, I'd go get a photo album and I'd flip through it. Happiness box is sort of the same way. You can use it to help with depression management or what we call opposite emotions. If somebody's feeling angry, encourage them to go to their happiness box, because nurturing that anger isn't going to do any good. Anger tells us we need to figure out what the threat is and either address it or let it go some way. But just holding on to that anger and carrying it around for hours on end is not helpful. The happiness box can help the person get into a different mental space for a few minutes until their adrenaline can go down and they can get into what Linehan would call their wise mind. The grief pot is another fun activity that this one uses. Terracotta pots, because you have to break it. It's not one that you can use a plastic pot. You put the terracotta pot, the big one, in a paper bag and you gently break it. Or I found an easier way to do it is to put water in it. Stop up that little hole and put water in it and then freeze it. Terracotta does not like to freeze. When it thaws, it generally cracks. I found that out the first year we lived in Tennessee. Whoops. But I digress. Once it's broken into big pieces, have people write on the inside of the pot all of the things that they lost when that person died or when the event happened, and then have them on the outside of the pieces, have them write the things that they still have and their resources that help them be happy. Then they glue it all back together. It's very symbolic that they are still whole. You know, they're the wounds from whatever happened. Those are the joints where all the pieces fit together, but they are being held together. And whatever happened isn't going to just magically go away. It's always part of who they are. But they have a lot of resources that are help holding them, helping to hold them together and continue on. Terrariums are another option that you can do. And you can either do an official terrarium, which can get a little costly, but some people love doing those, so more power to them. Or you can do an image in a bottle or a diorama, getting progressively less expensive and less challenging each one. You can use a fishbowl, one of the big gallon fish bowls that you can get at Walmart or an Old aquarium. Check your local dump or Goodwill. Sometimes people will turn in small aquariums. You won't get the 50 gallon ones. You'll get the little starter aquariums. Those are perfect size to create either a terrarium or a diorama. You can also use a gallon pickle jar if you have patience and a steady hand. I don't have either one, so that's not one that I generally use. But you can do it because the opening on a gallon pickle jar is big enough for most people, especially children and a lot of females, to get their hands in and out of four of my favorite themes, I guess five of my favorite themes for this activity are my safe place. They can create an image of what their safe place looks like. They can create an image of their favorite place and it may be the same as their safe space, but it may not be. They can create an image of what they think heaven looks like if they believe in heaven. And this can be an important activity for people who are dealing with death, anxiety or grief. They can do an image or a diorama of their life in two years that will help them identify goals. Maybe they want to have a new car and have a baby and three dogs and two cats. This is kind of what my house looks like. But figuring out what's important for them in two years because it gives them something to look at. It helps them visualize the future so they can stay focused. Or like many of the other things that we've talked about, they can do a diorama of the best things in their life. Another great place to get materials for this is Goodwill. If you go to a lot of towns and cities will have one main Goodwill repository where the stuff that doesn't get sold in the satellite Goodwills goes. And they sell it for like, you know, a dollar a pound or something. And you can find a lot of used children's toys, like dollhouse toys and things that can be picked up for super cheap and repurposed for use in these types of activities. There's a lot of fine motor skills that go along with creating an image in a bottle or a diorama, especially if you're using that gallon pickle jar. That's the main benefit of this particular activity. Besides the therapeutic visualization of what's going on. It can be used for when people have anxiety or depression. Gives them something to look at. It helps them put dimension to their safe place or their favorite place. So they have something that they can look at when they are meditating or they can Remember when they are trying to use guided imagery in order to help them mentally go to that safe space. It can be used for grief or goal setting and motivation. Like I mentioned, motivation buttons. This was a big thing in the 80s, not necessarily the motivation part, but these little tiny buttons that we all had on our backpack. And you could have whole backpack full of these buttons. And they generally had snarky sayings on them or things that made us happy or whatever it was. But you can buy these little blank buttons online very cheaply and they are fun. It encourages creativity and fine motor skills because you're going to decorate what goes inside the button. The plastic cover and the metal back are reusable. So people can pop off the COVID and replace the guts of the button whenever they feel like it. They don't have to buy a hundred buttons, they can buy 10 and just recycle. Use the button pieces, the COVID and the metal backing over and over again. You can create one each day or one each week, but I like one each day to get people kind of jump started with it that identifies their awards or their accomplishments that they've had. You know, start out with, you know, today I'm going to make a button that reminds me of when I won my fifth grade spelling bee. Whatever it is that is important to the person. You can put inspirational sayings on them. You can put distress tolerance skills. If you are familiar with dialectical behavior therapy, the acronym or mnemonic device improve or accepts, either one of those that gives you like 10 or 12 different distress tolerance skills that people can put on their buttons. And all you've got to do is go online and search for distress tolerance skills. Put it in quotes and it'll pop right up for you. Favorite activities is something else you can put on those buttons. Maybe you like sailing or skateboarding or hunting or painting or photography. Putting those things on the buttons that way when you see them, it reminds you of all the things that you really like to do. Things that make me happy, my strengths, things I'm grateful for. Another way you can use this is in group therapy or in family therapy with where people create buttons for each other. And it's the things I like about you. And they need to put one thing that they like about somebody else on the button. And then everybody collects buttons from one another. So if you've got 10 people in group, each person is going to walk out of there with nine buttons because they don't make one for themselves. With nine buttons that indicate things that the other people in the Group like about them. It's a really fun, empowering activity, not one you can do at the beginning of group because people don't know themselves, know each other very well yet. You need to wait till you're midway through group or towards the end of group, which is. I like to do a lot of self esteem stuff about midway through. This is a great activity to use. Then you can get a set of 30 blank buttons online and swap out images each month and then store the guts of the button, whatever you want to call it. The little papers in a box. You can reuse them. You can decide, okay, this week I'm going to use my distress tolerance buttons or I'm really feeling like I need inspirational sayings to be on my, on my backpack or on my sash. What do you do with these buttons? Most of us don't carry around backpacks anymore. If you're working with adults, they probably have briefcases and they don't want to put buttons on those. You can make sashes, you know, however wide you want to make them, like 6 inches wide and maybe 8 inches long and take a little dowel of some sort, wrap it around so you can use that dowel in order to hang the piece of material, whatever I'm looking for, the ribbon from the wall, and then you can put the buttons on that. So that way you're creating your own sort of sash that you can look at with regularity. Crocheting or finger crocheting. Crocheting itself requires a lot of fine motor skill and can be too frustrating for a lot of people. And I'm just going to put that out there. I find crocheting less frustrating than knitting, but it still can be frustrating, especially if you're trying to follow a specific pattern. What I'm talking about here in general is, is using the same stitch, like a double crochet, over and over and over again. You're not having to worry about counting and skipping and patterns and this and that. You can make a very nice looking blanket or hot pad or dishcloth using one or two stitches. If you use extra soft yarn, then it gives somebody something that they can hold and they can touch and they can caress. If you use the inexpensive, the cheapy yarns, they make great dishcloths, but they're not very soothing from a tactile point of view. You can have people as part of their activity, touch different yarns and see what which one feels best to them. Some people will feel a yarn. I know I do, I feel yarns to figure out which One might feel best against my skin, and I'm very snooty about my yarns. Benefits are fine motor coordination and sensory integration. When people are feeling them, it can help them integrate that touch, that tactile sensation, and identify how it makes them feel. You can have them create a soft scarf, a little mini blanket that they carry with them, or even a small pouch or purse that can be held or worn when anxious. Finger crocheting. You can make a scarf with finger crocheting, and there are YouTube videos online that will show you how to do that. It also provides you a manual activity that you can do when you're anxious. And finger crocheting is exactly what it sounds like. You don't use a needle or a crochet hook. You use your fingers, and you crochet using just your fingers. So the stitches are a lot bigger. But it does give you something to do with your hands when you're feeling anxious or stressed. Lighthouse is another art therapy activity. It's not really a medium. It's more just an art activity. Have people draw or print a picture of a lighthouse and then color it. Discuss the purpose of the lighthouse. What does a lighthouse do? And what in their life is a consistent source of guidance like a lighthouse would be? Because a lighthouse is a beacon in the darkness. Have the person draw themselves in relation to the lighthouse and color the scene to represent how they feel. They may be in a boat on a sunny day, on calm waters. That's great. That's awesome. Or they may be in a torrential storm, in the waves, in a boat at night. They can't see anything. They're terrified. Very different images from that white from that lighthouse. Have them explain why they drew what they drew. If they feel unhappy, if they draw that distressing sort of image, have them discuss who is in the lighthouse guiding them to safety. It can be other people in their life that are controlling that light to bring them into safety or. Or their higher power. And have them talk about how those people that are in the lighthouse helping them be safe are helping create light in the darkness. If it's a happy picture, we want to have them talk about. How does knowing that the lighthouse is always there make them feel safer, even though they don't need it right now? How does knowing that lighthouse is there make them feel safer? The benefits to the lighthouse activity, fine motor coordination, verbal communication, and visual expression. It can be used to enhance mindful awareness. You can ask them at any point in time after they've done this activity. The first time you Know who is, where is your lighthouse and what is the situation like? What do you need in order to get safely to shore? It provides creative visualization for anxiety, anger or depression when they're figuring out what that scene looks like in relation to the lighthouse. A self care box is another example of using a box for things. Use a medium sized box, a tackle box, a inexpensive toolbox, a diaper bag or a backpack. The benefits, as usual, fine motor skills in this case also gross motor skills and planning in this self care box. They're going to have to walk around to get things to put into that particular box. It can be used for vulnerability prevention and vulnerabilities are poor nutrition, dehydration, low blood sugar, exhaustion from lack of quality sleep, maybe pain because of muscle soreness. What could people put in the box that they could keep with them that would help them with self care? They could get snacks, you know, ones that aren't going to spoil. They could have a bottle of water. They could have. For me, a toothbrush and toothpaste is essential for pain. They could have some sort of liniment or ointment. Maybe they use whatever liniment or ointment. I don't want to start naming names, but they can have that in there. Maybe they use a TENS unit for their pain and they can have an inexpensive TENS unit in there that they can keep with them. Maybe they use essential oils to inhale in order to help them feel more relaxed. Whatever it is that they do to help them prevent vulnerabilities. If you're familiar with the concept, vulnerabilities are anything that may happen or go on with you that make you more likely to respond to unpleasant events with extreme emotions, make you more vulnerable to overreacting. You can use the self care box for anxiety, whether it's generalized anxiety or situational. Maybe getting ready to get up and give a speech or going on a first date. What do you need to put in your box to help you deal with anxiety? It could be, you know, for me I would put my rosary in there. I would probably put pictures of my family. You know, there's a variety of things that I would put in my self care box. Everybody's self care box is going to be a little bit different. If they're depressed, what can they put in their self care box? I don't want to take the depression away from them. I don't want to tell them they shouldn't feel depressed. Depression is a natural emotion. But how can they take care of themselves when they're depressed. If they've lost a loved one, for example, they may not feel like getting up and getting back on the horse right away. How can they nurture themselves when they're depressed? Books, coloring books, whatever it is that they can use to help themselves self soothe and nurture themselves while they go through that depressive period. You can also have a self care box for when you're sick. I used to have these all the time when my kids were little because when they would get sick, you know, they would be cranky and whatever and not want to play with their usual toys. I would have crayons, I would have coloring books. I would have things that we could sit in their bed and do that would, you know, generally make them happy. Coasters are another fun activity to do. We all use drink and sometimes we use coasters. But coasters are awesome because they sit there on the table and they kind of look back at you and they can be so communicative. You can use quark tiles or ceramic tiles that you get at, you know, any of the, like Home Depot or Lowe's or anywhere like that benefits again, fine motor and visual expression. What can you do on coasters? Coasters are things that are going to be there a lot. Generally we don't want to make coasters that make us unhappy. So your coasters are going to be positive, uplifting ideas. It can be happiness, reminders, photos. You can put laminate photos on the tiles and then you cover them with shellac in order to protect them from the drinks that are set on top of them. Leaves, drawings, wrapping paper, greeting card images. Anything that you might want to look at that is flat, you can put on a coaster. Obviously you're not going to put a key or something there because that would create an uneven surface. But anything that's flat. And if you want a key, maybe there's a particular key that reminds you of something. Take a picture of it and use that picture and put it on top of the coaster. You can put notable quotes on your coasters, you know, some of those encouraging quotes. Or you can use the coasters and create a set that communicates some concepts, such as hope, faith, love, courage, humility, honesty, loyalty. Another fun thing to do. And you can do it with concepts or you can do it with other things. If you have a set of, for example, eight coasters, create a square with all eight coasters and have that be one big picture. And each coaster is like a puzzle piece. It's only part of the picture. That can be fun. It can be Annoying or it can be fun. But there are a lot of different things that you can do with coasters. And it gives people something that they can keep with them that well at home, that reminds them of positive things or provides encouragement. You can create a daisy chain or a brick path. The daisy chains, if y' all think back to when you were very young, when we would cut strips of construction paper and we would glue them together and make this chain out of construction paper, well, that's a daisy chain. You can do the same thing with shower curtain hooks. If you don't want to glue the construction paper together, get lots of different shower curtain hooks, the circular ones, and link them together to create a chain. You can then use gift tags that have the little loops in them, not the ones that are sticky, but the ones that have the loops in them. And put those gift tags on each chain in the row and identify different things. Or you can create an imaginary brick path by using construction paper, sort of like Dorothy's yellow brick road. And on that path you can write different things. The path, since it's construction paper, doesn't hold up well to being on the floor, but it can be on the lower part of a wall. And I did that in one treatment center that I worked at. You can have this daisy chain or brick path represent steps to achieve a goal, necessary activities to prevent relapse, accomplishments, or even behavioral chaining. You know, where could you have broken the chain of negative events? Number 25 is the recipe box. And I like this one, but I'm a cook so I really. It comes naturally, I guess. But get one of those old fashioned recipe boxes and index cards like your great grandma used to have and prepare those in order to create something. It uses fine motor skills, helps with goal setting and written communication. So what are you going to do with these recipe cards? Well, you can create recipes, recipes for things like create a recipe for positive feelings. What if I want to create positive feelings? Just like if I want to cook a meatloaf, what ingredients do I need? So I need one hour of relaxation. I need one yellow pillow, whatever it is for the person, Then you want to move on. Once you have all the ingredients, whatever it is you need to you need in order to make you feel happy, or your recipe for courage when you're anxious, or your recipe for comfort when you're sad, it identifies all the things that you need. Hint, these are a lot of the things that would probably go into that self care box. And then how do you put them together? Just having a Dog doesn't necessarily make me happy, but having a dog sitting on my lap, now that makes me happy. When we were little, most of us made those little paper fortune tellers. You can do those again. And those are fun little things to have around. Mainly fine motor skill development here. But underneath the flaps on your paper fortune teller, you can have affirmations or things that help enhance self esteem, like good things, eight good things about me. Or eight distress tolerance or coping skills or mindful awareness such as mood, attitude, focus, concentration, health, energy, friends, family and work or school. So when you do the paper fortune teller, you flip up one of the flaps and it will tell you what you need to be mindful about at that moment. You need to think about, how am I feeling? For example, if you open the flap and it says mood, or if you open the flap and it says energy, you need to think, what's my energy level like at this moment? This is something that younger people are probably going to prefer as opposed to older people, but it is something that they can do. It's something parents can do with children as well. A balance is another activity that you can do. Build your own balance using a coat hanger, using, you know, just a regular old wire or plastic coat hanger and two cans or plastic cups. It needs to have an opening in it. You'll need stones or marbles. When I use marbles, I use the little tiny marbles, you know, the regular ones, and then at least five shooter marbles. Because the size of the stone or the marble represents the intensity of the feeling. You can also use coins. I would recommend, like quarters and dimes. You want to choose things that are pretty different in weight. If you just want to use coins, decorate on one side of the balance to represent happy. And on the other side of the balance, decorate that cup to represent angry or sad. And then have people think about what things in my life are making me happy right now and how happy are they making me? Is it a little happy or a lot happy? A lot happy would be the quarter or the shooter marble. And also what things in my life are making me sad right now, and are they making me a little, little sad or a lot sad? And have them go through that so they're balancing all the things in their life to figure out, you know, am I kind of balanced right now or do I have a lot more things that are making me sad or do I actually have a lot of things that are making me happy? It helps people get a sense of a visual sense of the intensity of what's going on. Remembering that one thing can be super powerful. You know, one thing can be super devastating or super happy and elating. And it can balance out, you know, one really good thing can balance out a lot of kind of minor irritants, or one really bad thing can overshadow some good things that are going on. And it's important for people to understand where they are in the balance. It can be used to teach purposeful action. Once people see where their balance is, then they can figure out what do I need to address in order to get back into balance and how can I do that? It can teach a self awareness of distress versus happiness. So they start becoming on a daily basis. If they do this activity, they start becoming more aware of the balance of their feelings. And instead of focusing on one thing that may not even be that consequential in their big scheme of things, it forces them to look at everything in their life and identify their sources of distress and happiness and recognize there is more going on than just any one thing at any one time. And you can also use it to teach motivational enhancement. Instead of doing happy versus sad, you can do pro versus con. And on each list, for example, going to graduate school, you know, they hang up their hanger and you have pro versus con. And the average motivation, the average pro would get a dime. But if there's a big pro to going to graduate school, then that would get a quarter. And that's a way. Instead of doing a pro and con list, which is kind of one dimensional, it gives people a way of envisioning not only the number of different factors that they're weighing, but the intensity and the weight of those factors. Eggs, if you get extra large plastic Easter eggs, I mean the ones that are the size of goose eggs. When think, talk about clients, talk with clients about how when eggs hatch, they bring new life. Okay, so let's go with that metaphor. We can use eggs to teach distress tolerance skills. Write an emotion on the outside, such as anger. Fill the egg with strips of paper that can be used to cope with anger. That way if somebody's feeling angry, they can pop open the egg and find new life, find inspiration, find a different mental state, if they will, if you will. Because they see ways to cope with this anger. Instead of feeling stuck and trapped on the egg, they could also write important people. They could put on the outside of the egg the name of their, their parent and fill with descriptions of that person. So whenever they think about that person, they can open the egg and remember the Positive qualities. Also a good grief. Activity goals. Write a goal on the outside of the egg and fill the goal with the different plans to or steps they need to accomplish to achieve that goal, or even motivations for achieving that goal when they open it up. You know, once they achieve that goal, maybe it will give them more time to spend with their family. Maybe, maybe it will give them less stress, maybe it will enable them to have more disposable income. Those are all things that would blossom or spring from achieving that goal. So when they open that egg, they're seeing the results of their work. And resources is another thing you can do on eggs. Write the resource on the outside and fill it with what that resource can do. Such as, if one of my resources is my best friend, she is, you know, a resource for me. In. I hate to say it like that because it sounds so clinical, but on the inside, what would I put? What does she do for me? She can provide me with support, encouragement, a sense of safety, and she's very helpful. She actually provides. She can also provide practical support when I need it, like picking my kids up from lessons or something. So as a resource, that's what she does. And identifying different sources of support that people have in their life and what those sources of support can do for them. What did those sources, how do those sources of support enhance their lives? Or what do they bring? Alphabet awareness. You can use poster board letters. You know, just write on a poster board the letter A. You can use wooden letters, the big ones from, you know, craft stores. You can use cardboard letters that have an O ring. And most of those are like the three inch cardboard letters. And there's an O ring that holds the whole Alphabet together. You can use whiteboard letters. Just write the letter on the whiteboard. Obviously that's temporary. You can do it on a poster board, or you can even do it on popsicle sticks in a decorated jar. Popsicle sticks and jars come up a lot. You can take one of those tongue depressor, those extra large popsicle sticks and write the letter A on it, for example. And that will help people with the activities. You can use it for positive affirmations. If A is the letter for the day, then they need to think of a positive affirmation that begins with A. You can use it for mindfulness. If the letter of the day is W, they need to find something positive in the environment, something positive around right now that they're aware of that has the letter W in it. And they can decorate their popsicle stick or their Letter accordingly. It's not just, okay, here's the letter A. I'm going to think of apples. I love apples. Well, instead of just seeing the letter and thinking of something with A, then I'm gonna draw an apple on it. Or maybe I'll make the popsicle stick look like the little worm and get a construction pace of construction paper and glue the popsicle stick to the construction paper. Construction paper. Apple. There are a lot of different things that you can do with it. Distress tolerance. Thinking of a distress tolerance activity that begins with the letter C, for example. And if you've got eight people in your group, then hopefully you will get eight different distress tolerance activities that begin with the letter C. Gratitude and daily goals are other ways that you can use Alphabet awareness. It just encourages people to continue thinking and once they get used to this, then they'll start thinking ahead of time before they come to group. You know, yesterday was D, so today's E. What can I think of that begins with the letter E? That is a positive affirmation or distress tolerance activity. And it starts encouraging them, you know, forward thinking and gets them thinking about positive things outside of group. Snowflakes. Just like each snowflake is different, so is each person. We used to cut snowflakes all the time when I was in grade school. It's not hard to do, but it does require a fair amount of fine motor skills. Once you cut out the snowflakes on each part of the snowflake, have the person write something special about themselves. And most snowflakes have, you know, lots of different little lines and parts to it. So they're going to be writing a lot of stuff on a particular snowflake. Or you can do like we did with the self esteem activity. You can get a larger piece of paper and make a larger snowflake for each person and then pass the snowflake around and everybody has to write on each other's snowflake something that they like about that person. You can use this for self esteem building activities. That's what I generally use it for. But you could also use it for something of an icebreaker. With an icebreaker, you don't know a lot about each other ahead of time, but you're going to pass it around. Or each person is going to write maybe five things about themselves on a snowflake and then you're going to pick up a snowflake and have the people in group try to guess what whose snowflake that is. Yeah, it's fun, it's amusing, it's an icebreaker. Balloons party balloons can be really fun. They can also be really visual in terms of what you can do with them. One of the activities I like doing is called take the wind out of their sails. That's what my. My grandmother used to say, just take. Take the wind out of their sails, which means don't continue to give them energy. Inflate each balloon and tie it off and write on the balloon something that makes you unhappy that you have no control over. So this is the. This is the mean people balloon. Have the person hold up the balloon and hold it closed. You know, it's not tied off super tight. And then when they're ready to stop giving that issue energy, when I'm ready to stop giving mean people energy, I let go of that balloon. And, you know, when balloons are let go and the air goes out of them, they fly around in all different directions, and they make that, we'll say buzzing sound. And that can be very poignant for a lot of people when they decide to let it go and watch it deflate. You can also write an emotion on each balloon. Have participants decorate each balloon accordingly. So if it's an angry balloon, it's probably going to have blacks and reds and things that make them angry. Start by having the group try to keep one in the air at a time. You're going to tie them off, and you have all these emotion balloons. You throw in the anger balloon. It's one balloon, eight people, not hard to keep in the air. Then you're going to add another emotion. So now you have anger and depression, and they're trying to keep those in the air. That gets a little trickier. And then you add in anxiety. That starts getting a little bit trickier. Eventually they'll have multiple balloons that they're trying to keep in the air at the same time. The last balloon you throw in is the happiness balloon. They're going to often be so distracted trying to keep the other balloons in motion, and they likely won't notice the happiness balloon when it's added. Or they won't be able to keep it in the air because they're already so busy keeping the other ones in the air, unless they choose to let something else drop out. And then you can talk about how that represents how we feel on a daily basis. We have a lot of emotions, and it's important to make room for the happiness and not use up all of our energy just juggling these unpleasant emotions. We need to figure out how to get them under control, so to speak. And balloon sculptures, just like the other sculptures that we talked about, Balloon sculptures can be kind of fun to do because you can get the round balloons, you can get the long balloons, you can twist balloons. There's a lot of stuff that you can do with balloons. The benefits to balloon activities are often gross motor skills. Because not only are you decorating the balloons, but in a lot of the things that we talked about, they're using larger movements in order to control the balloons. It can also be used to enhance teamwork, you know, keeping the balloons in the air. It can be used to teach mindfulness and purposeful action so they can visualize, you know, that balloon is that they're holding closed, is how they're using energy, staying angry. And when they're ready to let go of that balloon and liberate themselves so they're not giving it energy anymore, how much better do they feel? And anything with balloons, especially if you're trying to keep them in the air, will improve coordination and agility. There are endless things that you can do with art therapy to express emotions, to enhance mindfulness and self awareness, increase happiness, improve interpersonal communication, enhance fine and gross motor skills, develop self esteem and teach teamwork. It's just a matter of your creativity. There are also obviously tons of other activities that you can do for art therapy that I didn't even touch on. One of the things you need to consider is the skills of and the patience and the temperament of the people that you're working with. If you're working with children who have adhd, that's going to or working with elders who have Alzheimer's disease, that's going to be different in the activities that you do are going to be different with each group. So being cognizant of what is appropriate for that group and what they would find engaging. We don't want to do things with adults that they're going to find insulting, and we don't want to do things with children that they're going to find boring or too intellectual. It's a matter of partly being able to read your audience. Some of the things that you can do in order to figure out what's going to work is to ask. You can ask them, does this sound like it would be fun? Or you can have them try it and if after 10 minutes it seems like it's fallen flatter than a pancake, you know, have a backup plan. Not every art therapy exercise is going to hit the mark. Be prepared and know exactly what your objective is when you go in there is it just to improve fine motor skills or concentration or. Or are you looking for something more mental health oriented in addition to those benefits? I hope these activities have been helpful and have stirred that creativity pot in your mind. If you think of any other activities that I didn't include, and like I said, I'm sure they're there, please feel free to let me know in the comments and I will see you on the the next video. If this podcast helps you help your clients or yourself, please support us by purchasing your ceus@allce.com or getting your agency to sponsor an episode. A direct link to the on demand CEUs for this podcast is@allce.com podcast that's allce.com podcastceus to sponsor an episode of Counselor Toolbox and reach over 50,000 clinicians per week, go to allce.com sponsor thank you.