Poetry Therapy

Throughout my therapy practice I have written poetry as a way to reflect, grieve, and make sense of deep feelings that can get stirred up for me and my clients during sessions. Poetry Therapy, a term that became popular in the 1960’s, means poetry that is used for healing and personal growth. "Not I, but the poet discovered the unconscious," wrote Freud. Poetry Therapy is used by many professionals in therapy work including expressive and art therapy. Some ways I use poetry with clients is having them write poetry in response to their sessions, their artwork, as an ongoing journal inquiry, and in response to dreams. I keep several journals of poetry responses to my own personal work and to process my work with my clients.

When researching the history and development of Poetry Therapy, The Journal of Poetry Therapy is the richest source of current theory, research and technique. You may want to refer to The National Association for Poetry Therapy or NAPT.
You may have a collection of poems that you refer to when you need to be inspired. Mary Oliver, Rumi, Rainer Maria Rilke, David Whyte, Marget Atwood, Dylan Thomas, Pablo Casals and many more poets help us by making us pause and reflect.

For the last month, I have been living on Denman Island where we have a house surrounded by woods. I have meditating, journal writing, running and writing. I am working on a book about archetypes and a book of poems that I am hoping to publish that speaks to my experience of working with my clients. In this book, some of the topics that I am writing about are autism, domestic violence, depression, trauma, and divorce. If you are interested in learning how to include poetry in your therapy practice, I am going to be offering workshops for therapists. Poetry is a source of healing for me. What is your experience?

The following is a poem that I wrote on resiliency:

When I was younger it always felt like I was missing some inner strength, or some part. Instead of being able to support myself, I would just collapse.
I was part of the school track team taking part in a track meet in Verona.
I was in the lead, coming around a corner, when I collapsed on the ground.
My track coach, in an angry voice asked me why I gave up.
I couldn’t answer her. I just knew that I did not have it in me to finish.
It felt like something in me was broken or missing.
My brother used to tell me that I was the runt of the litter; there wasn’t enough left for me.
And he was the one in the family who liked me.

Summer Solstice

A group painting from our Summer Solstice party. Happy summer.

Power

 A client's sandtray image of Power.


Power
Power made me a coat. For a long time I kept it in the back of my closet. I didn’t like to wear it much. But I always took good care of it. When I first started wearing it again, it smelled like mothballs. As I wore it more, it started fitting better, and stopped smelling like mothballs.
I was afraid if I wore the coat too much someone would want to take it or I would accidentally leave it in the dojo dressing room. But it has my name on the label now, and doesn’t really fit anyone else. When people ask me where I found such a becoming garment, I tell them about the tailor. Power, who knows how to make coats that you grow into. First, you must find the courage to approach him and ask him to make your coat. Then, you must find the patience inside yourself to wear the coat until it fits.

The Book of Qualities BY: J. Ruth Gendler

The Art of Listening

Listening in therapy is an art form. If done effectively, change can happen through helping

the client move further into their ongoing flow of experience. The wording comes in a variety of versions; however, the idea behind the term listening is similar as can be seen across the following samples:

A safe and steady human presence willing to be with whatever comes up is a most powerful factor. If we do not try to improve or change anything, if we add nothing, if however bad something is we only say what we understand exactly. Such a response adds our presence and helps clients to stay with and go further into whatever they sense and feel just then. This is perhaps the most important thing that any person helping others needs to know. (Gendlin, 1996, as cited in Cornell, 2005, p. 149)

In Art Therapy, I listen to what people make with their hands: 

The listening response is an attempt to make contact with and carry forward this experiential flow. It’s not enough for the therapist to just say back the client’s words. Words are not feelings. The listener is trying to point his words at the concrete experiential flow for which the listenee is making symbols (words). The listenee checks the listener’s words against this ongoing flow. When the listening response is just right, it has an experiential effect – the flow of experiencing is carried forward. (Friedman, p.73)

    This listening opens possibilities for children to grow and develop in a way that is inline with their innate potential and desire, not in ways imposed on them. As an art therapist I know that authentic listening empowers children to get in touch with their implicit knowing of what the next right step is for them to feel better, get out of conflict and be able to move ahead in their lives. It is helping the child listen to and ‘be with’ whatever is disturbing them at the moment and teaching them that they can tolerate those emotions and sensations and listen to what they are saying to them. The focus is on supporting the intelligence of the child’s inner creative process. The child is learning to trust and stay with themselves and their own evolving process, which enables them to feel that they have advocacy, knowledge in knowing what they need to feel whole and healthy. 

Who listens to you? Who do you listen to?

    

No Place Like Home

I work with a lot of children who live in foster homes. Some of my children have moved multiple times. In my art therapy studio, we make a lot of homes. Homes for animals, us, and dolls.  Is it necessary to feel ‘at home’ where you live in order to evolve? Can our roots grow anywhere? Can we feel ‘at home’ in any environment, with any people, in any conditions? Home often has cultural, societal, familial, political connections characterized by family, and memories that translate into feelings of safety and love. When moving to a new place, one often feels in a state of limbo; both excited about the new possibilities and alien in the new home. One  could feel like tourist, imposter, outsider, or exile. Salman Rushdie in Step Across This Line (2002) writes “the human dream of leaving. a dream at least as powerful as its countervailing dream of roots . . is the tension between these two dreams.” (p. 13) When we move to a new place we live in this tension. Will that tension turn into a trauma, or new possibilities for growth and healing? It could go in many directions: ‘How does living in a city that does or does not feel like one’s ‘home’ affect you?  Can people thrive in countries, cities, houses in which they do not feel at home? What does it mean to be without home? Is it necessary to feel ‘at home’ where one lives to be ‘at home’ in one’s life experience? What is a home? What is home to you?