Art and Play therapy provides the child with a language that the child understands and is able to use. Colours, shapes, toys, games and textures can speak volumes when the child is unable to utter a single word. Using the art materials the child can free up his or her pain and share it with a caring adult, namely the art therapist, and transform the experience.

 

By describing the trauma in a language that the therapist understands, respects, and supports, the child leaves that lonely place of suffering. In receiving the gift of colours and textures, the child feels the permission to allow his or her body – in the form of hands – to speak of what has happened. And finally it is through the mediation of the image that the child’s unconscious can communicate with the child’s conscious mind of here and now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In order for the trauma to lose its grip over the child’s life it does not have to necessarily be dissected in every detail. It does not have to be told in words either. Metaphors and symbolic images offer the child a vast reservoir of meaning that no word can. It is similar to a story that, through fresh combinations of words, evokes powerful mental imagery. Images, just like poetry, speak from, and to, that part of the brain that is the domain of physical sensations, emotions, intuition, and creativity.

 

 Like a ship caught in a stormy sea that is now firmly anchored at the port, the child’s emotions are now connected with his or her experience. Through the supportive relationship of an art and play therapist, the child is able to master his or her painful experiences and feel powerful in the face of perceived internal monsters.

 

 

"1 in 10 children aged between five and 16 years has a mental health problem, and many continue to have mental health problems into adulthood"...  (Place2be, 2013)