Art + Therapy = ??

Apologies for the lack of postings of late, I sucketh greatly at the 'once a week' target I set for myself. Life got in the way and I wrote the posts in my head, instead of on here. The people that have read this blog for a long time, have begrudgingly got use to my erm erratic blogging schedule, but the new readers haven't. So I would just like to say thank you to the people that have always read this blog and thank you to the new folk that thought I had fell into chasm of doom and was unable to escape and blog.

Click it to biggify it

Last weekend I went to an Art Therapy Workshop, got a certificate and everything! I love certificates, especially my endeavour swimming ones .....

At the start of the session we were asked to write on post-it notes our Hopes and Fears about the session, you can see my answers in that first image.

What is on my mind?

After we talked briefly about Art Therapy, we where then set a task to draw what was on our mind at that very moment. In front of us there was a box full of material, different paper, colours, pen, pencils, chalks, paints, glue sticky things etc etc. After we chose our materials we were given twenty minutes or so to come up with a image.

Click to biggify

I challenge you:
My Challenge to you, is to tell me as much about the above drawing as possible, what do you think was on my mind? It is not a proper test, just an idea of how talking about a picture may work in a counselling/therapy session. I would love to know what you think! (really).
In the workshop we were split into groups of three and each had ten minutes to discuss and interpret each of our drawings. Then we went back to the group and discussed the experience as a whole.

Art means this to me:
I know that arty type things is not for everyone. It can evoke flashbacks to an evil teacher, disapproving parent or other lame adult figure, voicing their opinions that you just can't draw, so why bother? Why do people bother to sing in the shower? You know what type of singing I mean, that god awful killed a cat screeching hell noise. Why do people do it? Because they bloody love it! They know it sounds awful, but who gives a shit! Sure there is that small percentage of people that sound like a angel or one of the three tenors, but the rest of us plebs, just do it for the fun. The same applies to art, well it does for me.
Picking up a pencil and doodling can just be like that, FUN! It can also tap into that little person that lives inside, that little person wants to talk sometimes, they may want to tell their older self something that is buried away and they might think it is time to talk about that.The simplest stick figure in the world with a frown is telling you something, something that might be hard to talk about.

Obviously a one day workshop does not make me an Art Therapy Shaman, but I have witnessed the very powerful way in which it can work and I would love to learn more about it. For now I am going to use art in the way that I know and love, which is doodles.

Doodling enables me to tap into the little person that makes me doodle things like this....

Happy Clients  - The Therapist/Client relationship never really ends

Now was that worth waiting for or what? Maybe I should have took some more time off from blogging.....

I will do an Art Therapy Part Two if people seem interested and play along with the challenge.
Tweet

Paradigm erm what? A word adventure.

I have been thinking again.................. I know, I know, what am I doing that for?

It all started with a simple tweet from @zebraspolkadots, and a link to her blog post Claiming A New Paradigm...For Myself. This post intrigued me, in fact just the word 'paradigm' grabbed my attention. So then she wrote this post Claiming A New Paradigm For Myself-Part 2  and finally part 3.

Paradigm is/was one of those words that registered somewhere is this brain of mine, but I wasn't sure why and it what context I had heard the word previously. So I decided to go on a google adventure of sorts, find the origin of my paradigm memory and then try to understand the context in which @zebraspolkadots intended in her posts. My brain has felt more than flabby lately and I fully admit to not knowing everything, even though at times I act like the worlds biggest smart arse. Why pretend to understand something when I plainly don't?  It is exciting and challenging learning new things,so hold onto your hats, because I may confuse you, as much as I confuse myself with this post.

First I insert 'Paradigm' into the great googly moogly and trawl through the results until I get a 'Bingo!' moment. That is when I read something that either tickles a memory and/or makes sense to me.

The bare bones definition is:

The word paradigm ( Greek:παράδειγμα (paradigma),composite from para- and the verb δείχνυμι "to show", as a whole -roughly- meaning "example") has been used in linguistics and science to describe distinct concepts.

A more realistic definition for me:

The most annoying and misused word in the English language; used intentionally by stupid people to sound smart or by smart people to sound unintentionally stupid. Urban Dictionary

The first thing that tickled a memory was seeing these images whilst reading about 'Paradigm Shift'

Old Woman and Young Woman My Wife and My Mother-In-Law, by the cartoonist W. E. Hill, 1915 (adapted from a picture going back at least to a 1888 German postcard)

Duck/Rabbit Source: Jastrow, J. (1899). The mind's eye. Popular Science Monthly, 54, 299-312.

Both of these images, show how you can look at the same thing and in turn 'see' two different things. Nothing about the image changes, just your perception of it. A dude called Thomas Kuhn, knows a lot more about this subject than  I do 'Paradigm Shifts'.

But that is not the paradigm you are looking for.....(said in Obi-Wan Kenobi stylee)

So on I plod in search of this elusive Paradigm definition that would make sense to me and I try not to get ahead of myself with 'paradigm shifts', before I actually know what a Paradigm really is.

It seems that I have wandered into the world of, god forbid, buzzwords... You know those horrid things that sales and marketing people love to use, as they target us poor members of the public. People really don't like buzzwords and jargon, as seen here , but underneath all the bullshit, they are metaphors that can be applied to all sorts of life situations.

Heard of the term 'Thinking outside the box' ? Did you ever wonder what the box was, what was inside that box? Well it turns out the 'box' is in fact a bloody paradigm! Who would of thunk it, that bloody box holds a lot of information. In that box a lot of things lurk, dark nasty things, like:

• The World is flat
• Creation instead of Evolution
• Moon is made of cheese
• Other evil things 

Outside the box, lives Blue Skies and all sorts of lovely things, in fact, outside the box the possibilities are endless. It even holds the key to solving the Nine Dots Puzzle! woo hoo.

So it seems, that I am in fact leaving the science behind and in fact talking about labels that people stick on you, as you plod through life. Think of yourself sat in the box, what labels, or to be fancy, what paradigms have been stuck on you?

Nobody puts Claire in a box! ( Must be said in a Patrick Swayze style R.I.P Mr Swayze)

Actually I am pretty sure people have put me in a box, in fact I have put myself in a box many times over my life. The 'I am ugly' , ' I am worthless', 'I am stupid' and 'I am fat' box, to name but a few. I also know that other people get labelled with damaging things like 'You are mental' 'You are crazy' 'You are broken' 'You are damaged goods' and I am sure you can add a shit load to that list.

People eventually accepted that the earth was not flat, does this mean that eventually people will accept that the labels you are given in this life, are not stuck on with superglue and you can rip them off. I am sure ripping the labels off can be painful, but surely once the sting has gone, the scab really heals over the wounds left by those labels and you can flick it off? Was that a scab metaphor to far? 

I created the doodle during the weekend just gone and to decided to test my twitter followers doodle guessing skills,to see if they could guess what one word prompted the above doodle, without any other information than the actual doodle itself.

After quite a few guesses, one person got it right, so I am sending them the doodle for their hard work, lucky them?

Paradigm Doodle explained: It makes sense to me and that is what really matters......

Click image to make it BIG

Other interesting and far more sensible paradigm like articles are here and here, also a fascinating video featuring Ken Robinson here (really worth a watch).

I don't know what the point of this post was really, I just found the subject rather bloody interesting and would hate to be sat in a box all alone, never to be shifted.

I am I

In searching for poetry for my 'Who Am I' project I am came across this poem by Fritz Perls, called the 'Gestalt Prayer' .
I was already familiar with old Fritzy but not this poem or the supposed controversy that surrounds it. Well controversy may be stretching it a wee bit, maybe discussion starting is better.
It seems that when some people reproduce this poem they omit the last line 'If not, it can't be helped', I wonder why? Also do you see this poem as oversimplfying things, as life is just not that simple? It certainly appeals to me, so I will be having a think on it.

Other news:
Check out my new counselling student squidoo type thing, where I am going to collect together all the counselling resources I have found useful: A student in counselling (broke the link before)

Olga steps up the MoonWalking campaign for me These boobs are made for walking

Personal Philiosophy on Counselling (sort of)

Well hopefully this uploads okay, because I have wasted years of my life trying to post the fucker rather difficult thing.

It is my take on the Personal Philosophy assignment I was given in college. In which we were required to create a twenty minute presentation for our class group on our Personal Philosophy as it relates to counselling and counselling studies.

I hope it provides a insight into the internal process of my rambling mind, as I try to get to grips with various concepts and theories.It is also full of humour, doodles, analogies, metaphors and whatnots.

Counselling Personal Philosophy

View more presentations from Claire Pitt.

Please let me know what you think.

Personal Philiosophy on Counselling

Whilst fannying about researching and typing up all things college like, I use twitter to sound out thoughts and ponderings about counselling and being a therapist/counsellor. Not sure if I am actually doing counselling/therapy any favours at all.....

Personal counselling philosophy of the day: Your therapist is the imodium to your emotional diarrhoea.

Personal philosophy of the day: Sometimes you need therapy like you need a colonic irrigation, shit builds up and you need help working it out.

My personal philosophy is....Life is full of potholes, pack a torch, rope and crampons, climb the fuck out and then get ready to do it all again.

At the moment I am reworking  my 'personal philosophy on counselling' presentation and I thought I would add a splash or two of humour to the mix. Also I wanted to drop the F bomb into it just to see if anyone notices.It was meant to be done tonight in class, but the nervous and the technologically challenged went first. I like to pretend that I wasn't nervous at all, which was of course a wee fib and as we over ran I now have till Monday to rejig it.

I may even post it on here, if your really really good......