Alternatives to talk therapy help people express themselves artistically

Being expressive has not always been easy for 15-year-old Victoria. After an abusive situation in her childhood, she now lives in a foster home and is looking for ways to move forward. “I have no memories until I was 13 when I felt something other than pain,” says the teenager, who didn’t want to disclose her real name due to her situation. She is currently having her name changed to Victoria.

Nancy McPhee and her foster daughter, Victoria, admire the art they have produced during their art therapy sessions provided by the Alberta Health Services.

Photo: Cara Casey/Calgary Journal

Recently, after Victoria did harm to herself, she was put in touch with Marilyn Magnuson, a registered art therapist through Alberta Health Services.

Magnuson uses art in combination with writing and talk therapy to help the children she works with to express their feelings and emotions easier.

“Emotion is processed in the body…so we hold a lot of emotion in our bodies. In talk therapy, you are always filtering out what you are going to say and how you’re going to say it. Art therapy releases symbolically because our communication was symbolic,” Magnuson says.

This is especially the case for children who were traumatized before they could speak, Magnuson says. “The trauma comes out better (in art therapy) than what they would articulate.”

After working in social work and talk therapy, she says that it would be very difficult for her to go back to doing therapy without the aid of art.

Even after Magnuson has trained psychology students in the use of art therapy, she is still amazed at how the students can have breakthroughs.

“You think that you have worked out a certain issue in your past through talk therapy, but then that image or issue appears in your art because it’s so visual and in your face. Art therapy just makes it come at you from a different view point,” Magnuson says.

Victoria says: “I am more open with my feelings. I prefer art more than anything else.”

Each week she undertakes three art pieces: one individual, one family and one in a group setting.

In her family art piece, Victoria and her foster parents all work on the same piece together but are not allowed to speak to each other.

“I think this is a really neat experience and I’m so blessed to have my (foster) parents come and join me. I’ve never really seen my parents do art,” Victoria says.

She also uses the time with Magnuson to release her negative emotions.

“One day I was really mad because I didn’t want a disorder,” she says.

She adds that she came in to therapy and released her emotions into her artwork.

Victoria explains that she hates the labels that were attached to her after her trauma.

Her foster mother, Nancy McPhee, can’t get over the changes she has seen in Victoria since they have been seeing Magnuson.

She and her husband are currently going through the process of adopting Victoria.

“It is amazing, the information we have found out about Victoria that she just couldn’t bring herself to talk about,” McPhee says. “Things like never having a Christmas present before coming to our home. I mean, wow. I had no idea. I thought maybe one or two things but never thought she had gone a whole Christmas without anything.”

“One day I was really mad because I didn’t want a disorder.”

—Victoria , art therapy teen

John Griffith is the owner and director of Spiritual Directions, which is a counseling and wellness facility in Calgary.

He believes that art therapy works extremely well in adults and, most notably, seniors.

“For people that are dealing with grief but don’t want to talk about it, a journal or scrapbook can memorialize the loss,” Griffith says.

He also explains that the key point of art therapy is it’s a “meditative process on how to connect your thoughts to a physical expression.”

After seeing art therapy in action, Griffith believes that it also has very quick results.

“It is amazing how much healing can occur in such a short time,” he says.

After working with Magnuson at the Holy Cross for a few sessions, McPhee believes that a large part of the success of the therapy is the therapist.

“Marilyn has such an amazing nature. She is so calming and it’s all in how you present what you want people to do. It is very non-threatening,” said McPhee.

“A lot of time in life it’s the words that have caused so much hurt. This is a lovely way to heal.”

Currently, Victoria has started writing a book called It’s Not My Fault, and hopes to become a full-time writer in the future.

A poem she has written about her recovery gives her and her family hope for a bright future:

“Jesus is the loving water. There is a rainbow in every story. Home is where the heart is. I see my heart being mended and through the cracks there is light.”