Solution-Focused Art Therapy

Art therapy is a great alternative therapy for people who cannot or chose not to vocalize their thoughts and emotions. Solution-focused art therapy is a great way to include the client in art therapy. People have many reasons to start or participate in art therapy. Art therapy has many parts or steps in order to obtain the most positive outcomes. Art therapy is different from other kinds of therapy because it can be nonverbal while others require verbal communication. In the book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, although she doesn’t realize it, the main character, Melinda, uses art therapy to overcome her traumatic experience of when she was raped. Thesis statement. One technique of art therapy is solution focused art therapy. Solution-focused

Art therapy has been defined as the therapeutic use of art making, with a professional therapist, by people who experience illness, trauma, or challenges in living, and by people who seek personal development (Nighesh 812). Art therapy is a nonverbal process, ¨Art therapy is based on the idea that the creative process of art making is healing and life enhancing and is a form of nonverbal¨ (Avramova 52). During art therapy, the client focuses on the process of making the art and not the beauty of it. Art therapy can encourage people to understand and show their emotions with a creative process. Expanding coping skills, diminishing stress, forming an identity and regaining control of emotions and thoughts can be great reasons to cooperate in art therapy. This causes a sense of well-being, resolve problems, relieve people from trauma, and resolve conflicts (Avramova 52). Art therapies can be applied to “support the maintaining of a cultural identity, especially in situations where some of that identity is lost or is in conflict with the dominant culture” (Dieterich-Hartwell 3). Art therapy helps individuals organize and understand emotions and memories (Korlin 333). There are many valuable reasons to engage in art

Art therapy can help people present and interpret their emotions, ¨Insight and comprehension; individuals reported, that art expression helped them to put their emotions and non-verbal experiences into words¨ (Avramova 52). Even the simplest task can have many outcomes that help people to portray what the are thinking when they cannot put their thoughts into words. Avramova outlines what a therapist can do in nonverbal therapy, ¨[...]they can determine what’s most important to patients also by nonverbal feedback such as facial expressions, gestures¨ (52). Nighesh claims, ¨In addition to the creative process, the artwork itself has tremendous power: It stands as a concrete reflection of the maker 's world view and acts as an expression of feelings with or without accompanying verbal explanations¨ (813). Add a sentence between the quotes NOT DONE WITH THE