Lindsay Betz Therapy

I’m going to approach this from the angles of clients and therapists because I believe creative approaches are beneficial for both!

Not going to bury the lead here: talk therapy barely scrapes the surface of what’s possible. If you’re a client, you can ask for more. If you’re a therapist, you can offer more.

For clients, just talking is not usually sufficient for whole body, mind, and spirit healing because talking only deals with one component of the body. What you experience affects *all* of you, including the nonverbal side. For therapists, it’s often frustrating to only utilize talk therapies when clients aren’t quite ready to or capable of broaching a difficult subject.

This is where creative approaches like art, sand tray, and play come in.

Here’s why clients should have access to creative approaches:

1. Creative approaches provide you with something tangible that you can a, take home and b, process and think about later. Unless you take notes in your own session, you’re going to forget what you talked about with your therapist. This is where physically creating something with your therapist comes in handy.
2. Creative approaches can help you understand who you are, express feelings and ideas that words really can’t, and boost your life through self-expression.
3. There is healing power in the process of play, creativity, and art making. The process itself provides part of the healing experience. Especially if you don’t know how to talk about what you’re dealing with yet.
4. Art making and creating worlds in the sand tray can specifically provide a safe and possible way to get close enough to whatever the challenge is without tackling it head on (till you’re ready of course).
5. People utilizing nonverbal channels, like art, sand, etc. have been found to recollect what they had forgotten and thus were able to more fully process and heal.

Remember, what you experience affects your whole body. Talking is always welcome, but it shouldn’t be the only means for healing offered.