Burned out on talk therapy and not sure it helps to rehash and vent? Do you long for a therapy that might actually be fun and feel good in session—maybe even better when you leave?

While targeted talk therapy using an evidence-based modality can be helpful, it’s easy to slip into story and stay there, using therapy like a repetitive bitch session with a friend. The goal of therapy is not just catharsis or even validation. With Expressive Arts Therapy or Coaching, the creative process circumvents the rational, adult-presenting mind’s control of the process.

Expressive Arts Therapy

"Art making is a way of dwelling in whatever is before us that needs our attention. There is a universal tendency to turn away from difficulty. Image making allows for staying with something while making that staying bearable through the pleasure available in using the materials."
— Pat Allen, Ph.D., ATR-BC

Visual language speaks to the body and from it, and it engages the unconscious, a VERY important partner in understanding self-sabotage and our unique keys to change.

Art-making and sand tray work reveals what verbal expression cannot always show, at your own pace. You do not have to be “good at art.”

Contrary to popular belief and the skill-based approach to art in school, art is for experimenting, communicating, and mindful flow. It is a medium of knowing and communicating that is not rational, logical, articulate, or anything in particular. Spontaneous mark-making and intuitively shaping supplies like clay, fabric, and junk materials into something new can be surprisingly revelatory of personal themes and needs. And it can feel like play, which is healing—ESPECIALLY for adults.

Expressive Arts Therapy can be particularly helpful for neurodivergent folks, allowing for a slower, quieter pace of therapy that doesn’t drain energy the way communicating verbally face to face sometimes can. It can also pull for special aptitudes that sometimes come with neurodivergence, like seeing and conveying overarching patterns, step-wise thinking, conceptualizing through metaphor, and thinking and communicating in a non-linear fashion.

Expressive arts therapy may be used to:

• Access deeper understanding of past and present experience

• Learn about what you might be truly needing, beyond what you think you need or should need

• Process trauma too overwhelming to be encountered directly

• Envision and rehearse change

• See and recover from inherited perfectionism

• Regulate the nervous system with movement and use of tactile materials

• Be witnessed and cared for in what is too raw to say out loud

Sandplay Therapy

Sandplay is a hands-on, depth-oriented modality that helps us connect with the psyche’s natural drive toward healing and wholeness.

In sessions, clients use sand, miniature figures, and imagination to build symbolic “worlds” that reflect inner truths.

No need to create a “story” or explain. The symbols speak for themselves.

Anything that appears in the sand is thought to be an important expression of inner life that points to authentic needs.

Clients often find:

• A release of emotional tension

• Access to intuition and creativity—discovery of how you are experiencing your life at a given time and how present relates to past and future for you

• Insight into long-standing patterns

• A sense of calm or grounding through embodied creativity and sensory activity

• Being nurtured through being witnessed and respected in your unique creation

You might use Sandplay every session, or occasionally when we seek deeper understanding of what you’re working on. From your very first time, your symbols and inner story begin to unfold—gently, enjoyably, and meaningfully.