Types of Therapy...The Arts Therapy Post!

I never knew there was more than one type of therapy! In the past few months, I've been exposed to a wide variety of them. This post is my way of sorting through some of the larger ones, in attempt to help figure out what ones have worked best for me, and which ones to pursue in the future. As I'm going through my little notebook that has come from psych hospital to psych hospital, I want to take a few posts to explore the different types of therapies I've been exposed to.

Psych Journal

Arts therapy is the first type of therapy I'm tackling in this blog. Without knowing the textbook definition, it seems like this type of therapy uses the creative arts to help you express your emotions in safe ways through safe outlets. I've been in three hospitals in the past few months and the most common arts therapies have been: music, writing, movement, and art. I found the creative outlet awesome, especially in hospital settings where creative expression is rare, so overall, while I don't think I'd pursue these, necessarily as an outpatient, they were rockstar while stuck inpatient.

Music Therapy: This seems like a really popular one as it has been in every single hospital, even the first one I was at. Again, the idea of this type of therapy was to help us access and express emotions through music. This seems to be done two ways, one is by choosing a song to play for the group, listening to said song, expressing why you picked said song, and then a group discussion. The second way is by playing live instruments.

The picking, playing, discussing a song really helped to improve my iTunes library! I love listening to new music, so I jotted down the names of the ones I liked, and it was really fascinating to hear how different people connected to certain songs. I chose Breaking the Habit by Linkin Park, and that got a pretty good discussion going. I chose it from a mental health perspective--I really just want to stop fucking up my life by making awful choices while manic and finally learn some coping skills that work--and others took it from the perspective of addiction and how when the habit is finally broken, then life can start again. Was a good conversation which eventually led to coping skills as a discussion group.

The second type of music therapy--the one with the live instruments--didn't really do much for me. There wasn't a lot of direction, no tempo or rhythm set, so it was really a bunch of noise, which actually made me more anxious than anything. But, having been in drum circles before, I can see how just being carried away on a rhythm and blending various sounds can clear your mind. Unfortunately, this particular attempt at it, just didn't give me that same clarity.

Writing Therapy: This type of therapy seemed to use writing prompts, both fiction and non-fiction to process through emotions and trauma. I didn't know that writing therapy was a thing, and when I saw it on the schedule I was pretty excited. This group was handled in two ways: creative and journal writing. I found both extremely helpful, and while I don't think I need a therapist, necessarily, to guide me through writing, I'm going to keep it up as a valuable part of my own healing.

The creative writing experience, while I had a good time writing, kind of blew up on me. I'm a creative writer, with a bent towards darkness, so I haven't written anything "positive" in quite a number of years. My go to, as far as narrative, is horror, and my poetry is as dark as all Hell, so I didn't exactly set myself up for success. The therapist gave us a prompt, in this case it was about a young man walking somewhere (we had to decide) during an early sunset after a rainy day, carrying a paper bag of groceries. We had twenty minutes to write. Of course, I got right to work, my brain going. Andrew, my character, had killed someone in his past during Halloween, and as he was walking through the twilight, the pumpkins and the wind seemed to speak to him, mocking him to remember. When the time clocked out, I tacked on an ending, and then we all shared our stories and discussed them. Needless to say, considering this was in a psych hospital, there were so many questions about where this inspiration came from. I had no answer, but on a positive note, the therapist, as she was making notes in my chart, stated I was "a very talented, albeit intense writer." I was pleased with the compliment, but not so pleased when the haunted voices I created in this story kept returning to therapy sessions.

We also did journaling, which is a bit safer for me in terms of creativity, and responded to journal prompts about our lives, which we shared as a group. It was really sad, to see that a common thread amongst women in one group is sexual assault and rape, but these journal entries did open a conversation amongst us and we talked about different ways of coping, and ways to remove our own victim shaming and stop blaming ourselves for the actions of others. It was a really powerful thing to share all of that, and liberating to have a place to discuss and heal from such trauma in a way that was safe and where people understood.

Movement Therapy: 
This type of therapy seems like it uses a myriad of movement, dance, and yoga to

process emotions. Considering my background in dance and choreography, I can see where it can be really helpful. In fact, I vaguely remember that when I was studying at Laban, we had a dance therapy workshop and I remember feeling very cathartic after it. This particular dance therapy group didn't leave me with that feeling. It was unstructured, and I couldn't really see what I was supposed to do. It felt like I was just wiggling around. I enjoyed wiggling and moving to the music, so it did bring me joy, which is huge in a psych hospital. So while I didn't feel that same catharsis I did at Laban, it was nice to just move and find joy in the moment.

Postcard to my future self

Art Therapy: This type of therapy seems to use a wide variety of visual art mediums to create projects for processing emotions and goal setting. This one was pretty cool. At Carrier, we had to establish a goal for ourselves. We used magazines and cut out pictures and words to create a sort of vision board that we then put up in our rooms. We also shared them and why the goals were important to us. Mine was to use my talents (creative) to make a difference in my own life and in the world. A bit lofty, but I was also a bit manic, so that makes sense.

In this new hospital, we made postcards to ourselves or to someone else with something we always wanted to say. I didn't fully follow the prompt, but I did a bunch of musical quotes and other important ideas I wanted to keep in my mind. I didn't keep the vision board, but I've kept this postcard. It's going to be put in a prominent place so that I can look at it when needed.

In Conclusion: I really did enjoy the creative arts therapies. I felt they were fun, a great outlet, and a new way to explore healing instead of just through medication, and talk therapy.