Beyond Words: Creating a New Language for Healing; The Use of Art Therapy in Trauma Work
Date: Friday, November 14, 2008
Time: 9:00 A.M.-5:30 P.M.
Location:The Trauma Center at JRI, 1269 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA
Cost: $160
Presenters: Erika Lally, LMHC and Michelle Harris, LMHC
Trauma survivors are often challenged by the use of words in communication. The very nature of trauma and the inherent qualities of dissociation may leave the client struggling to articulate his or her exprience. Reliance on a verbal language approach in treatment may, at times, generate even more frustration and distress. With art materials and the art process, it is possible to access the inner experience without reliance on words as the starting place. Art therapy is a treatment modality that utilizes art media, art process and art products as communication within therapy. Art therapists learn to attune to the nonverbal cues of their clients and have a lexicon for the kinesthetic properties of art that help them in the formulation of individualized media interventions and art therapy treatment approaches. The Trauma Center is pleased to offer a one-day training to introduce both these basic art therapy concepts and specific considerations crucial to using an arts-based aproach in trauma treatment. This training is a hands-on, highly experiential workshop with information also presented through slides, case examples, and discussion.
This training will:
-- Integrate the basic tenets of effective trauma treatment within an art therapy framework.
-- Highlight the potential of retraumatization when including image making as part of trauma therapy work.
-- Address safety through increased attunement to client and clinician responses to artmaking.
-- Bring all the senses, movement, and creativity into trauma work with affect regulation as the goal.
-- Structure a creative process that is strength-based for problem-solving, organization of thoughts, naming "what is" and meaning making.
This training is intended for both the art therapist looking for a trauma treatment framework as well as the trauma clinician who is drawn to using art within their treatment. Previous art making experience not required. Participants should be prepared to immerse themselves in art activities and dress comfortably.
About the Presenters:
Erika Lally, LMHC, ATR-BC, holds a Masters in Art Therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Massachusetts and a Registered, Board Certified Art Therapist as recognized by the American Art Therapy Association. She has provided trauma treatment for both children and adults for fifteen years. Ms. Lally is a clinician, supervisor and trainer at the Trauma Center. She additionally coordinates the Trauma Center's Child Evaluation Services and consults on the Multidisciplinary Assessment Team at the Cambridge Department of Social Services. Erika also is an adjunct faculty member at Lesley University, teaching in their Master's Level Expressive Therapies Division. Erika specializes in treating complex trauma and she is EMDR level two certified.
Michelle Harris, MA, ATR-BC, LMHC, is an art therapist specializing in trauma work with children, adolescents, and adults. She is clinical intake coordinator at the Trauma Center and has been leader of the Positive Sensory Group, a structured skills-building group focusing on self-care and safe alternatives to numbing, avoidance, and shut-down responses in daily life. Ms. Harris also specializes in collaborative community art projects such as the Coast Miwok/Southern Pomo tribe's quilt on faith and tribal identity. She is currently creating a traveling quilt series with incest survivors called "Speaking Truth" to address intergenerational trauma and how trauma survivors can be preventative and proactive when telling their history in a developmentally appropriate frame for children in their life. Ms. Harris is an art tutor at Harvard University and faculty at Lesley University in the Expressive Therapy Department and in the Trauma Center Certificate Program.
For more information or to register, click here.
Editor's note: to read more blog entries about art therapy and combat trauma/PTSD, click here.
