What is Art Therapy?

It may surprise you to learn that art can be an effective tool in mental health treatment. What could art possibly have to do with psychotherapy? As an expressive medium, art can be used to help clients communicate, overcome stress and explore different aspects of their own personality. In psychology, the use of artistic methods to treat psychological disorders and enhance mental health is known as art therapy.

Art therapy integrates psychotherapeutic techniques with the creative process to improve mental health and well-being. The American Art Therapy Association describes art therapy as "a mental health profession that uses the creative process of art making to improve and enhance the physical, mental and emotional well-being of individuals of all ages. It is based on the belief that the creative process involved in artistic self-expression helps people to resolve conflicts and problems, develop interpersonal skills, manage behavior, reduce stress, increase self-esteem and self-awareness, and achieve insight."

When Did Art Therapy Originate?

While people have been using the arts as a way to express, communicate and heal for thousands of years, art therapy only began to formalize during the middle of the 20th-century. Doctors noted that individuals suffering from mental illness often expressed themselves in drawings and other artworks, which led many to explore the use of art as a healing strategy. Since then, art has become an important part of the therapeutic field and is used in some assessment and treatment techniques.

When Is Art Therapy Used?

Art therapy can be used to treat a wide range of mental disorders and psychological distress. In many cases, it might be used in conjunction with other psychotherapy techniques such as group therapy or cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Some situations in which art therapy might be utilized include:

• Children with learning disabilities


• Adults experiencing severe stress


• Children suffering from behavioral or social problems at school or at home


• People experiencing mental health problems


• Individuals suffering from a brain injury


• Children or adults who have experienced a traumatic event

How Does Art Therapy Work?

An art therapist may use a variety of art methods including drawing, painting, sculpture and collage with clients ranging from young children to the elderly. Clients who have experienced emotional trauma, physical violence, domestic abuse, anxiety, depression and other psychological issues can benefit from expressing themselves creatively. Hospitals, private mental health offices, schools and community organizations are all possible settings where art therapy services may be available.

You might also wonder how an art therapy session differs from the average art class. "In most art therapy sessions, the focus is on your inner experience—your feelings, perceptions, and imagination. While art therapy may involve learning skills or art techniques, the emphasis is generally first on developing and expressing images that come from inside the person, rather than those he or she sees in the outside world," explains Cathy Maldiochi in The Art Therapy Sourcebook . "And while some traditional art classes may ask you to paint or draw from your imagination, in art therapy, your inner world of images, feelings, thoughts, and ideas are always of primary importance to the experience."

Full Article: http://psychology.about.com/od/psychotherapy/f/art-therapy.htm

Source: http://www.about.com/#!/editors-picks/

How Our Insecurities Can Reveal Our Deepest Gifts

By Ken Page

http://www.psychologytoday.com/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-love/201109/how-our-insecurities-can-reveal-our-deepest-gifts

In my decades of practice as a psychotherapist, this is the insight that has inspired me most:

Our deepest wounds surround our greatest gifts.

I've found that the very qualities we're most ashamed of, the ones we keep trying to reshape or hide, are in fact the key to finding real love. I call them core gifts.

It's so easy to get lost in the quest for self-improvement. Every billboard seduces us with the vision of a happier, more successful life. I'm suggesting an opposite road to happiness. If we can name our own awkward, ardent gifts, and extricate them from the shame and wounds that keep them buried, we'll find ourselves on a bullet train to deep, surprising, life-changing intimacy.

Over the years, I realized that the characteristics of my clients which I found most inspiring, most essentially them, were the ones which frequently caused them the most suffering. 

Some clients would complain of feeling like they were "too much"; too intense, too angry, or too demanding. From my therapist's chair, I would see a passion so powerful that it frightened people away.
Other clients said they felt that they felt like they were "not enough"; too weak, too quiet, too ineffective. I would find a quality of humility and grace in them which would not let them assert themselves as others did.
Clients would describe lives devastated by codependency, and I would see an immense generosity with no healthy limits.

Again and again, where my clients saw their greatest wounds, I also saw their most defining gifts!

Cervantes said that reading a translation is like viewing a tapestry from the back. That's what it's like when we try to understand our deepest struggles without honoring the gifts that fuel them.
When we understand our lives through the lens of our gifts it's as if we step out from behind the tapestry and really see it for the first time. All of a sudden, things make sense. We see the real picture, the moving, human story of what matters most to us. We begin to understand that our biggest mistakes, our most self-sabotaging behaviors were simply convulsive, unskilled attempts to express the deepest parts of ourselves.
Susan came to therapy after her boyfriend of two years left her. She had put the whole of her heart and all her energies into her relationship, and when it ended, she felt utterly destroyed. "Why can't I let go and move on like he did, or as my friends tell me I should?" she asked me on her first visit.
As she described her relationship history, I saw a consistent quality of kindness in her; a soft-heartedness which people kept taking advantage of. Susan appreciated these qualities in herself, but she also felt like they were a curse. (That very ambivalence is one of the main indicators of a core gift.) I sensed that a key to her healing lay precisely there. Again and again, we worked at helping her reframe her sensitivity not as a weakness, but as a gift that she-as well as her former partners-didn't know how to honor.
It sounds simple, but seeing these qualities as a gift was the foundation of new dating life for her. By seeing their worth, she could learn to understand, honor, and even treasure them.
When Susan looked at her life through the lens of her gift, she felt triumphant. "I was right all along!" she said. "Those things that bothered me about my boyfriends bothered me for a reason. I wasn't crazy. I just didn't honor my gift and I found men who were all too happy to agree with me."
I've named the approach I used with Susan "Gift Theory." The easiest way to explain Gift Theory is by starting with the image of a target. Every ring inward toward the center moves us closer to our most authentic self. In the center of the target, where the bull's-eye is, lie our core gifts.
Core gifts are not the same as talents or skills. In fact, until we understand them, they often feel like shameful weaknesses, or as parts of ourselves too vulnerable to expose. Yet they are where our soul lives. They are like the bone marrow of our psyche, generating a living stream of impulses toward intimacy and authentic self-expression. But gifts aren't hall-passes to happiness. They get us into trouble again and again. We become most defensive-or most naïve-around them. They challenge us and the people we care about. They ask more of us than we want to give. And we can be devastated when we feel them betrayed or rejected.
Since the heat of our core is so hard to handle, we protect ourselves by moving further out from the center. Each ring outward represents a more airbrushed version of ourselves. Each makes us feel safer, puts us at less risk of embarrassment, failure, and rejection. Yet, each ring outward also moves us one step further from our soul, our authenticity, and our sense of meaning. As we get further away from our core gifts, we feel more and more isolated. When we get too far, we experience a terrible sense of emptiness.
So, most of us set up shop at a point where we are close enough to be warmed by our gifts, but far enough away that we do not get burned by their fire. We create safer versions of ourselves to enable us to get through our lives without having to face the existential risk of our core.
The Gift Theory model invites us to discover what our core gifts are (most of us don't really know), to extricate these gifts from the wounds that keep them buried, and to express them with bravery, generosity, and discrimination in our dating life. When we do this, we find healthy love moving closer.
 If you're looking for love, try to discover your own gifts.  They shine in your joys and strengths, but they also live-and hide-right in the heart of your greatest insecurities and heartbreaks. If you learn to lead with them in your dating life, you will find-almost without trying-- that you're experiencing mutual attractions with people who love and treasure the very gifts you're discovering.
 In future blogs, we'll explore in much greater detail how to discover your own core gifts. In the meantime, I invite you to take two or three minutes to reflect on the following question:

Are there essential qualities in you which have sometimes felt more like a curse than a gift? Perhaps you haven't known how to handle them, or maybe you've had the painful experience of other people misunderstanding or taking advantage of them. Take a minute to begin to put words on these qualities. As you name them, you'll learn to honor them, and you'll come to understand your struggles, your intimacy journey and your life story in a new way.

The Altered State Hypnosis Debate

One of the many mysteries of hypnosis is where hypnosis comes from. Many researchers believe that hypnosis produces an altered state of consciousness while others believe that there is no altered state with hypnosis. Research has been conducted to try to fully understand what happens when people are hypnotized. One of the reasons why hypnosis eludes scientists is because there is still a lot to be learned about the human brain and how it functions.

The debate on whether hypnosis is a state or a non-state is known as the 'altered state debate.' People who believe that hypnosis does not involve an altered state of consciousness argue that the effects of hypnosis and suggestions can be achieved without a hypnotic induction (Whalley, 2009). One researcher (Spanos, 1986) believes that suggestions, including analgesia suggestions and amnesia suggestions, have a socio-cognitive link. Spanos believes that people who undergo hypnosis are able to convince themselves to believe a certain way and this occurs cognitively and not due to an altered state of consciousness.

An altered state of consciousness (ASC) is defined as, "any of various states of awareness (as dreaming sleep, a drug-induced hallucinogenic state, or a trance) that deviate from and are usually clearly demarcated from ordinary waking consciousness" (Meriam-Webster). An altered state is often compared to a baseline state which is a state where "the psychological sense of the self is at the center of one's perception" (Whalley, 2009).

A scientific aspect of this debate about where hypnosis comes from involves looking at brain functioning and brain images. When studying the brain, researchers are presented with an important question: How much different from the baseline state would hypnosis have to be in order to be classified as an altered state of consciousness?

Various methods are being used to determine how to measure hypnosis. Neuro-imaging is being used including PET and fMRI scans. These tests allow one to see activity in the brain during hypnosis and without hypnosis. Another method of measurement includes behavioral studies. Studies attempt to compare the behavior of hypnotized and non-hypnotized individuals (Whalley, 2009).

The debate on whether hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness continues to be argued. There are multiple studies that back up both sides of the argument. At this point in time, there is no clear answer. With time, as more behavioral studies are conducted and as researchers learn more about the human brain and its functioning, we will learn exactly how hypnosis occurs in the mind.


Source:: http://www.naturalnews.com/027103_hypnosis_debate_consciousness.html#ixzz28dAtFVL6
http://www.naturalnews.com/index.html

6 Psychological Reasons Consumer Culture is Unsatisfying

Buying stuff can be disappointing. After swallowing the hype, checking out the options and trolling for bargains, finally you've got it; your brand new whatever-it-is.

Before long, though, the excitement fades. Your whatever-it-is isn't so great any more. They've brought out a newer model with more features and anyway you've seen it cheaper elsewhere. It's happened to all of us.

Psychological research tells us that this disappointment is particularly pronounced when people buy things like mp3 players or watches, compared with experiences like vacations or concert tickets (see: experiences beat possessions).

In a new series of studies, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Carter and Gilovich (2010) explore six reasons that material purchases are less satisfying than experiential purchases, and what we can do about it.

1. Objects are easy to compare unfavourably

In their first study participants recalled past experiential and material purchases costing at least $50 and were asked to rate their satisfaction with them. People were consistently more satisfied with their experiential purchases compared with their material purchases.

The reason is that experiential purchases are difficult to compare. The band you went to see on that wet Tuesday after work on the spur of the moment is likely to be literally incomparable. On the other hand mp3 players are much easier to compare: one has more memory while another looks prettier.

When it's easy to compare two things, like salaries, dissatisfaction isn't far away because there's always someone who earns more than you or, in this case, has a better mp3 player than you. And if they don't have it now, they will in six months because that's the nature of consumer culture.

2. A 'maximising' strategy leaves us less satisfied

There's a crucial difference in the way we make decisions about material and experiential purchases, as revealed by the second study.

When people choose material purchases they tend to use a strategy psychologists call 'maximising'. This means comparing all possible options. But because we live in a world of endless choices, maximising takes a long time and is hard work; so people often end up irritated and unsatisfied even when they chose the best possible option.

However, when people choose experiential purchases they tend to use a strategy psychologists call 'satisficing'. This means setting a minimum standard for a purchase then choosing the first option that fits the bill. Studies show that this leads to greater satisfaction with purchases and people are relatively untroubled by the existence of slightly better options.

Although maximising seems the better strategy, paradoxically it leaves people less satisfied than settling (sorry 'satisficing', ugh).

3. Material purchases more likely to be re-evaluated

Imagine you buy a new electronic gadget costing $1,000. After you've bought it, do you ever go back to look at the other options, just in case? Would that change if it was a vacation you'd bought instead at the same price?

When researchers simulated the situation they found that, having bought a gadget participants were more likely to continue investigating the alternatives than if they'd bought a vacation, despite not being explicitly asked to do so.

We automatically re-evaluate material purchases after we've made them. In comparison decisions about experiential purchases, once made, are not revisited and so we have less opportunity for disappointment.

4. The new option effect

It's always the way: right after you buy it they bring out a new, improved model, or introduce better options.

When Carter and Gilovich simulated this situation in the lab, participants reported that the new option effect was more disturbing when buying a watch, a pair of jeans or a laptop than when buying a holiday, movie ticket or fancy dining experience.

Once again experiential beat material purchases.

5. The reduced price effect and 6. A cheaper rival

Like the introduction of new options, retailers also have a habit of dropping the price right after you buy something. Worse, the next day you spot it cheaper somewhere else.

Carter and Gilovich found that people were more troubled about the reduced price of laptops and watches than they were about cheaper holidays or meals out.

Similarly participants reported being jealous of rivals who'd paid less for material purchases at another retailer, but weren't so jealous when it came to experiential purchases.

Think experiential

This all begs the question of how we can be more satisfied with material purchases, other than simply trying to avoid all the above.

Carter and Gilovich wondered if it comes down to how we view our purchases. Take music for example. Buying music can be viewed as both an experiential and a material purchase; it's an object (even if digital), and it's the experience of listening to the music: where you are, how it makes you feel and what you're doing at the time.

Perhaps thinking experientially can help us avoid disappointment?

In their last experiment the researchers encouraged half their participants to think of music as a material purchase and the other half as an experiential purchase. They were then told the price had been reduced. Sure enough participants who were thinking in experiential terms were less bothered by missing out on a bargain and therefore likely to be more satisfied with their purchase.

This experiment suggests that thinking of material purchases in experiential terms helps banish dissatisfaction. Try thinking of jeans in terms of where you wore them or how they feel, the mp3 player in terms of how the music changes your mood or outlook, even your laptop in terms of all the happy hours spent reading your favourite blog.

By thinking experientially we can make more of what we already have and ward off the invidious comparisons that can make the treadmill of consumer culture so unsatisfying.

Source: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1ZMD8Q/:1KmYAur4F:Xl@cBh1a/www.spring.org.uk/2010/04/six-psychological-reasons-consumer-culture-is-unsatisfying.php/

Video: Your Irrational Brain