The Morning of the First Day!!!

It is the morning before I start my real job and I have over an hour before I leave (45 minutes earlier than I need to) so I thought this would be a good time to get out my last thoughts as a non-working art therapist.

I had a dream this morning that I haven't quite figured out yet, but it's definitely related. I was doing therapy for the first time with a thin dark-haired adolescent boy. He was pretty resistant, either said nothing or that everything was great, like I think it typically goes with adolescents who don't trust their therapists yet. Because it was a dream, part of my job was to walk him home, and of course, he lived in the neighborhood where I also grew up. In fact, he lived at the end of my street. So, we're out of the therapeutic space and we're walking and he tells me he has something he needs to talk about right when we're almost to his house. I know I am supposed to have good boundaries and only see him for an hour, but I ask him if he wants some extra time to talk about it. I'm flattered that this kid seems about to open up, curious about what he has to say and concerned that if I let the moment pass he will clam up again the net time I see him. I ask him if he wants to take some time to talk right then, but he says, "No, next time." He gives me a flower that looks like this one that I just stole from the internet...

and he says "I lied about one of these things." When I take the flower, it has words written on the inside of the petals. I recognize it as something he made with his last therapist (who I know was male, I don't know why that would be relevant, but I'm adding it anyway). Each petal has a single word written in black and the kid pulls out the petal that says, "happy," before he goes back into his home. I know this kid is telling me he isn't the everything-is-great-show he has been putting on and I feel sad for him. I go back to some other old artwork the last therapist left. It is a drawing of his life in black and red marker, but everything is positive sounding and generic. I still don't know him.

This leaves me a few minutes to state my hopes and fears about my new job. My hope is that I love my new patients/clients/residents/kids (I don't know what to call them yet) and am excited about everyday I get to spend with them. I hope I am always motivated to help them and willing to do my homework to learn everything I can to help them come to terms with their lives. I hope the people I work with are friendly and supportive. I hope they're willing to be open to the first art therapist on staff at this facility and offer guidance without squishing me so early in the game. I fear politics and getting used, because I'm eager. Most of all, I'm afraid I won't like my patients/clients/residents/kids and will dread driving into work everyday.


In the meantime, check out what I made this weekend! Not only do these monkeys have faces (painted... a new sock monkey technique for me), but they also have lucky bellies and wings.

The Sock Monkey ETC Assessment

This is one of my bags of monkeys in progress. I have piles of monkeys in various stages of assembly which is a very odd way for me to work. At first, I thought I was working several monkeys at a time for etsy store convenience, but then I noticed I have been drawn to my least favorite part of monkey making: cutting, sewing, stuffing and assembling. Usually, I work one sock at a time and I keep my eye on getting to the final touches and figuring out the monkey's story. I'm like a sculptor looking for the monkey in the sock and giving it a voice. I approach sock monkey making on a cognitive level. I know that sounds ridiculous -- I'm talking about SOCKS here, but that's how it is.

This past week, however, I am just a monkey-making machine and not so into thinking. I'm all kinesthetic in the monkey making, just getting into a rhythm of stuffing and stitching and that's all I want to do. I think I have 8 or 9 monkeys sitting around waiting for me to do my favorite things to them, but I haven't had the desire. Instead I grab another empty monkey and stuff some more or reach into my sock stash and start another one. My last supervision teacher would say, "That's diagnostic." I heard her voice in my head today while I was hand stitching a monkey crotch and realized how extra weird it is that I don't know why I am doing this.

It's not narcissism that makes me need to examine myself. I just think it's bizarre that people like me who are trained to make sense of artistic behaviors and have insight into creative choices can have moments of not knowing the meaning of their own need to make a pile of faceless sock monkeys. I don't know if it's just me being a rookie or if it's a necessary part of a therapist's job, but I find myself a great practice patient, because I can't help you if I can't help me and also I get some of my best ideas from experimenting with what works to keep me on target, so to speak. So, this is why I questioned myself about the odd monkey-making behavior today.

So, I am working with repetition and not a lot of thought. This seems to be a self-soothing thing to do, but I don't feel especially anxious even though I am about to start a new job next week. On the same day I start training at my new job, I also volunteered to teach a yoga class for families staying in town while their children receive cancer treatment and somehow that scares me more than anything right now, but not enough to change a lifetime of creative habits. I pondered over myself quite a lot today and as I traced the passing thoughts and emotions that have been running through my mind this week, I think I got why I'm stuck on creative self-soothing.

I just experienced the first father's day without a father, eleven months after my father died. Triggering, but I feel at peace with my father's death somehow. However, in addition to the holiday and anniversary, this time of year has not been my emotional favorite since my mother died; June is a month of regret. The end of June was when my mom received the fatal dose of chemo that destroyed her digestive system and caused her to suffer a long torturous medically-induced death. That wasn't supposed to happen. Her cancer was treatable. Therefore, this is the time of year that things could have gone very differently if only we weren't a family that trusts authority and doctors so easily. If a time machine fell into my yard today I would go to Junes past and save my family. Regret is not one of the most enlightening emotions in grief and it would make sense that self-soothing would be in order. This might also make my fear of teaching yoga to families of kids getting chemo feel a whole lot more scary than it really is. But, I am a facer of fears and experience so far has proven performance nerves are really good liars but poor fortune tellers.

I don't know what good it does me to come to this conclusion about why my sock monkeys have no faces this week. But it does leave me wondering now what? I don't believe in avoiding negative emotions, but rather honoring them. So, Dear Regret, I don't know what to do with you, but I meet you at the door and welcome you with whatever you have to share. For now, Regret and I have some sock monkeys to stitch and stuff.

In the meantime, ETC stands for Expressive Therapies Continuum and if you want to know more, read this: Expressive Therapies Continuum: A Framework for Using Art in Therapy, by Lisa D. Hinz.

The Value of Structure

Now that I have a job and a start date, I am overwhelmed with all of the outstanding and amazing things I wanted to do during the months I thought I might be unemployed. I'm so overloaded with potentially super duper fulfilling options, I'm not very effective at any of the things I had in mind. I am trying to do all of them at once or worse, I am wandering around between them just trying to decide where to devote my attention and not actually doing anything at all. Time wasted. That's the unfortunate side of too many interests.

My cure for that is not adderall, but daily writing and it's pretty clear that needs to be a habit I renew real soon... as in the next time I wake up. Last summer I read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I didn't like it, but I did attempt some of the exercises just to see what would happen. Cameron suggests keeping your creativity flowing through writing "Morning Pages," as in 3 pages of free writing every morning. So, I did it. What I discovered was not that I was more creative, but that I was more focused and able to set priorities throughout the day if I started my morning writing whatever came to mind.

What comes to mind when I allow myself to hold still are thoughts on what I value, what worries me and all of the awesome things I need to experience in this short little life. That sounds like a longer thought stream than it is. The truth is, I run out of things to think within minutes. Really, if you pay attention, you probably just think a few versions of the same thoughts over and over and it's harder to maintain that pattern if you're writing wherever your thoughts go. So, if I'm writing instead of getting attached to the same little handful of my favorite mind stories, there isn't anywhere reasonable to take that but to break it all down into little manageable chunks that I can actually accomplish in the moment. Day and mind organized with very little effort. Voila. So this is where I need to begin again. Time to dust off the old journal.

It would be nice to start my new life as a real therapist with some structure in my brain.

And along those lines, please direct your gaze to your right and notice the small survey on the side of my blog. Any recommendations for future ramblings?

And for the sake of images, one of the things I have been doing is preparing a new etsy shop. I have piles of monkey parts all over my desk right now. Here is the first one I completed. Shop opens when I hit 10 new monkeys with bios.

Zee, the mohawked tagger

An Adolescent Group Intervention One

Okay, back to our regular scheduled programming...

A couple of years ago when I was doing my internship with adolescents. My fellow intern and I were co-leading (unsupervised) and had a curriculum to follow (we didn't make it) and it was failing. The kids had been there long enough that many of them had already done it plus they were not ready for the work it involved in the first place or at least they weren't gonna play along on this with 1st year interns (talking about their behaviors, trauma, emotions...) It was pretty much a total nightmare and the rookies running the show (us) were getting eaten alive every single group.  We absolutely could not get to the information of the group, because following the curriculum resulted in chaos and power struggles from the first minute. It was a bad scene.

We talked about it with our supervisors and finally my supervisor (also the director of the program) said, "Drop it. Do something else until they are ready." So we did. This is what we came up with and it was AMAZING. My co-intern and I were doing high fives and body slams after this. (Okay, we didn't really do any body slamming, but I was feeling that Superbowl Sunday pumped and I think she was too.) It was the best group we had all year.

So, here's what happened: we decided we needed to talk about respect, because there wasn't a whole lot of that going on. So, we said it in song. We googled respect lyrics, looking for something other than R.E.S.P.E.C.T and got this from Train:

For reasons I don't know I treated you so cold
I wish I had those times again
Cause something that you said keeps ringing in my head
Someday you're gonna wanna come back and you're gonna wanna treat me fine

Everybody needs a little respect
Everybody needs a little time
Everybody needs a little respect
Everybody needs a little

I watched me push you down in dreams I had of you
And all I remember about those days is I would run around thinking that you'd be alright
But you lost your light along the way
And oh you were right about the things I'd say
Cause if I had it back again I know I'd treat you kind

Everybody needs a little respect
Everybody needs a little time
Everybody needs a little respect
Everybody needs a little time
Everybody got to have somebody
Everybody got to have someone

And all I ever wanted from this play
Was someone to talk to when I get down
It seems you get the things you give along the way
Now all I need is one more chance to make you feel like hanging round

Everybody needs a little
Everybody needs a little
Everybody needs a little respect
Everybody needs a little time
Everybody needs a little respect
Everybody needs a little time
Everybody got to have someone

We gave them all double-sided photocopies. One side had this, the other side had some really simple sentence completion in a poetry format. It was just something we threw together like,

To me respect is ________________________.
I feel respected when people ________________________.
I wish everyone _______________________.
etc.

We read the lyrics together and then invited them to either write their own lyrics/poem about respect or fill in the sentences. Then we had a little poetry open mic and discussion about how we all want to be treated. The gods smiled down upon the baby interns and their group that day, because the kids LOVED it. They. Loved. It. THEY LOVED IT! Words cannot express the beauty of this moment I swear to you. If it wouldn't have been poor boundaries, I would have kissed the forehead of every person in the room that day. I got so excited I said, "I am so amazed by how well you guys write (TRUE!). I think we need to make a book with this stuff!" and they thought so too and wanted to bring in more poetry, create art for the book on their own time etc... they lost interest in this later, but I think if we leaders had been a little less rookie and a little more creative, we might have been able to maintain a sense of excitement about that project and worked the curriculum we were supposed to follow into this... maybe.

After reading Contemporary Art Therapy with Adolescents, I think part of the success of this had to do with not only appealing to their interests (they like to write), but also we were not directing this at them. This wasn't about "tell me how you should be respectful and lets review group rules (snore)" but more like, "hey what do you think about respect?" According to Shirley Riley, teens do better when asked about a topic in general terms and don't do so well if asked about their own weaknesses and thoughts due to the natural narcissistic developmental stage.

The kids also noted how great the group had been which allowed us to discuss what they thought had made that happen and how we could have more awesome groups.

I Interrupt The Aforementioned Scheduled Post...

... For an announcement.

I had my first post-grad interview and I GOT A JOB!!!

Worry Person Holding My Work Worries and Working Some Art Therapy Magic!

Not only did I get a job, but I got a full-time Monday-Friday job with a salary (above my expectations) and benefits in a beautiful space with a committed staff. I will be working with adolescent boys who have developmental delays and sexual-reactive behaviors in residential care. This was not my first choice of population, but it's not an unfamiliar one and I feel stoked to take on the challenge, which I think will help me grow into one hardcore bad-ass therapist. Not only that, but they're rewriting the curriculum and wanted an expressive therapist to help with alternative interventions and finding new methods. And they're taking interns for the first time in the fall and they want a couple from my program. It sounds like an exciting time to be coming in.

Not to jinx anything, but I consider myself lucky in many areas of my life and one of them is job-getting. So, now that I scored one, here's what works for me:

First, social psychology has taught us that once a person thinks something, they will look for evidence of what they already believe. People like to be right. So, I take my resume and cover letters pretty seriously, because if I can impress someone before I am interviewed, they will look for ways to remain impressed during the interview and possibly ignore any anxiety or stupidness I might accidentally express. I rewrite portions of every cover letter for every place I send it, noting something about the position and hospital/company/residence and why I would do well there. I also adjust my resume if necessary, stressing some experience more and downplaying other as feels appropriate.

Once I have a call for interview, I research the place I am going and the available position. I brainstorm relevant questions. For this interview, I also read up on working with the population and prepared to respond to questions about how I would work with them.

When I go to my interview, I bring a bag of tricks. I have extra copies of my resume, reference letters, etc. in case the interviewer doesn't have a copy. For this interview, I also brought copies of a group curriculum I wrote for teens at my first internship and small samples of simple/neutral art therapy interventions that I made, just in case there were questions about what art therapy is. However, I am not a salesperson pushing my wares, so these are only backup should questions arise. In this interview, my props stayed in my bag. Just knowing I had them, probably helped me feel more confident though, and that's never a bad thing.

Working with Adolescents Part One

This past week, I have spent some time preparing for an interview to work with adolescents in residential treatment, which is something I have done for work and in my first year internship, so I feel about as okay going to this interview as one can feel going to her first post-grad interview. Behaviorally, I have prepared for this by reading Contemporary Art Therapy with Adolescents by Shirley Riley and I am glad I did, because it's super useful plus it takes a social constructionist view of working with adolescents which I can get behind, plus "social constructivism" is a cool term to throw around to make your friends feel like you are smarter than them.

Mentally, I have been thinking about what I learned from working with this population in the past: assessing what worked and what didn't. My guess is that such a conversation could arise in an interview to work with adolescents.

So, that being said, please stay with me as I organize my thoughts on this topic. Not that I am an expert, but here is my perspective of skills useful for working with this population based on my short experience. If you have other ideas or comments, feel free to post them (especially pre-interview-Thursday).

1. Begin from a person-centered theory and keep it as an umbrella covering every other theory you might employ. Acceptance and positive regard is critical, because teens in care don't get a lot of that and genuineness is even more relevant, because adolescents have a high sensitivity for adult bullshit. 

2. Knowing stuff having nothing to do with therapy is super helpful. For example: card games, gaming systems, super hero characters, slang words for street drugs, how to play basketball, rap music. Staying in touch with your inner 15-year old and the interests of current 15-year-olds can get you places (but remember to stay genuine and don't force it). I don't like professional sports or the Twilight series and I refuse to pretend I do. I do like to play wii and I know who Lil Wayne is, so that works for me.

3. Be easy-going about what you will tolerate and upfront about what you cannot. Be prepared to back it up as fast and calmly as you can. If you allow your toes to be stepped on one minute, you might be trampled to death the next.

4. Be transparent about not knowing all the answers and don't assume you have a clue about how to intervene when you don't. Ask the patient/client. I worked with some pretty tough individual cases and one of the things that surprised me was that they knew what they needed to work on and could name their goals as well as I could, if not better. Sometimes their solutions needed some tweaking and sometimes just support. Remember you're just a  tour guide in the land of options, not a magician.

5. When it comes to groups, be as flexible as possible. Go in with a plan, but if you can get away with turning the group into something relevant to the moment within a minute, do it. That's what makes art therapy awesome, by the way. " Hey, I'm hearing a common theme of feeling 'locked down.' Draw about freedom vs. constraint.".. or whatever.

6. If you do groups, figure out which teen is "the leader" and plan your groups for him/her while allowing for the needs of others. If you can "catch" the leader, it is suddenly super simple to do an amazing group with teens, because at least in my experience, they'll feed off the enthusiasm of the leader.

7. In my teen groups, check-ins at the beginning of group often got out of hand: too long and worse, led to arguments. If given the choice, at least with my particular group, I preferred a specific question to open check-in. What kind of weather pattern would you be right now? Mark and label your degree of whatever mood you're feeling on this thermometer, etc.

Part two will list my favorite directives for this population.

And... as a visual person, I am disappointed by the lack of art to go with this post, so allow me to introduce my latest sock creature:

Real Name -- Janice Finkelstein, Street Name -- Spike
(Her bio will be available on etsy.com once I get around to re-establishing my shop.)

20 Things I Did in 1 Week of Unemployment

(Or Welcome to My Neurosis)

1. On the first day, I decided I would spend the week wasting time, so I watched a netflix documentary, Dark Days (It was alright) and started reading the novel A Visit from the Goon Squad (also alright). I wore pajamas or a pajama-like outfit all day. I became aware that I might identify quite strongly with what I do, because I hated every second of this relaxation and felt like a schmuck (side note, I have not been officially unemployed since age 15). So, for the following days...

2. I made almost 30 artist trading cards using various techniques.

3. I decided to host a trading card swap with the theme "octopi."

4. I couldn't stand trying to relax and wait to job search anymore and resolved to send out 4 resumes per day before allowing myself to shower or get dressed.

5. After 1.5 days, I ran out of jobs I wanted, so now I just send to every new appropriate listing every morning and due to the holiday (I hope) it has been slim.

6. I worked in my yard: trimmed hedges, reseeded grass, planted flowers, planted seeds, planted an apple tree, mowed the lawn twice and removed a stump.

7. I "taught" my dogs to swim.

8. I made thank you cards for people I need to thank regarding graduation gifts. They look something like this:

They haven't been mailed yet though, because I don't have envelopes. That's on my list of to-dos today.

9. I started to clean my basement studio again, because it became a disaster since I last mentioned it.

10. I bought more $1 socks to use for creature-making. I also decided to try a sock idea I've had in mind for awhile, but it's really elaborate for socks, so I haven't wanted to go much further than imagining myself doing it yet.

11. I wondered if I should have been a social worker instead.

12. I spent $240 on the study guide for the LMHC exam (which is possibly the all time biggest waste of my money, because it is a stack of photocopies that appears to have been made and bound at Kinkos -- I just better kick-ass after studying it for 6 months is all I have to say).

13. I started working on a new sketchbook which I purchased from the Art House Co-op to go in the Sketch Book 2012 tour, because what do I need with all these journals and sketchbooks for anyway? I chose the theme, "Ask me how I can help," because it seemed most relevant to this period of my life. I am rebinding it with pages torn out of a children's anthology of stories. A blank spread looks like this:

The spread I am working on looks like this:

It opens horizontally. I plan to sew the pages in when it's complete.

14. I planned out reopening my etsy shop in my head.

15. I started reading Existential Art Therapy: The Canvas Mirror by Bruce Moon.

16. I printed the application for the LMHC exam.

17. I drove around with my top down.

18. I thought about what sort of artist I am and began to contemplate combining media (sewing and photography/print-making).

19. I contemplated researching book-binding techniques. Maybe that's a natural fit.

20. I got an appointment for my first interview and instantly felt a little better about not being a social worker!

This first interview is for working with adolescent boys, so in my next 2 posts, I plan to tell you what I have learned about working with adolescents and how I prepare for an interview. I am hoping to write something relevant for my fellow rookies.