catherine fallis: expressive arts & play therapies

Expressive Arts Therapy

Expressive Arts Therapy brings imagination and creative expression into the foreground of the counselling process. The impulse to express ourselves through art has been an integral part of human life throughout history. In all cultures, art has provided a means by which suffering is confronted, explored, and sometimes transcended. Regardless of experience or training, and whether through image, movement, sound, or writing, creative expression allows our unconscious world to be brought into awareness and witnessed. I use all of these modalities in my practice, and encourage all forms of creative expression, however tentative. Clients arrive at new perspectives and insights when their emotions, frustrations, and dreams, are represented and viewed in different ways. Children are especially comfortable with this mostly non-verbal language, and will often move fluidly from creative expression to play to words, as they negotiate their lived experience. The needs and wishes of each individual client determine which modalities are used.

Play Therapy

Play is the natural language of children. Play Therapy has developed as a method of working with children who are experiencing emotional, social, or behavioural difficulties. Children are often unable to find the words to communicate about their distress. Play Therapy invites them to use imagination and symbolic play to express difficult feelings, to experience a sense of control over their world, and to be witnessed and accepted by a caring and non judgmental adult. The Play Therapy room is set up with specifically chosen toys that offer the child the opportunity to work through stressful or traumatic situations. The toys may include puppets, a dollhouse, a sand tray and collection of plastic figures, games, as well as art and craft materials. Usually Play Therapy begins with a meeting with the therapist, a parent, and the child. As the therapy progresses, sessions may be held with the child or a parent alone, or with various configurations of family members, depending on what would most benefit the therapy process.