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elcome back to this latest episode from the Lessons from the Playroom podcast. I have with me today a really special guest. For those of you that can visually see this, you may automatically recognize her.
For those of you that are not able to see the visual part of this podcast, I do have with me the one and only Kathy Melchiatti, who is going to join us to have a discussion today about the Expressive arts. So if by chance you’re one of the few people in this field that are not familiar with who Kathy Malchiati is, let me go ahead and give you a little bit of introduction through her bio and then we will say a proper hello. So kathy is the executive director of the Trauma Informed Practices and Expressive Arts Therapy Institute.
She works as a consultant to the Department of Defense and an investigator on a five year grant with the US. Department of Education. Integrating Trauma informed expressive arts into classrooms.
Kathy, that’s so amazing. Thank you for being a part of that for our world. A popular presenter and workshop leader, she has given over 700 invited keynotes and workshops.
Pretty much you name the country. And Kathy has probably been there to present in some capacity. She has authored 20 books including the best selling Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy, Brain, Body and Imagination in The Healing Process and Understanding Children’s Drawings.
They’ve been translated in over 20 languages. Kathy, thank you so very much for being here. This is truly an honor to have you as a part of this podcast.
I was just thinking, when you said countries, I thought like, the only place, and I want to go there, but I don’t think they want a lecturer. There is antarctica. You might have a very attentive audience that’s probably a captive audience.
But I thought, I’d really like to go, but I don’t know that they’re going to have me there. Well, Kathy, thank you so very much for joining me. You have been around in this field for a while, bringing such wonderful insights and education to so many.
Can we start a little bit with I want to ask you a little bit about you so that we can learn a little bit about your history and who you are. What got you into the Expressive Arts? Has that always been a thing for you? It’s interesting, the field of Expressive Arts therapy or Expressive Arts, sometimes people call it expressive therapies and we can get back to a definition of that later. But they come from all places now.
But I think my generation, I think the more advanced professionals, we all kind of started in the same way. And we were in the arts. So I was in art school.
I went to the School and Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Got a BFA. So it was basically in fine arts.
But when I was in that program, I was interested in performance art. So drama, theater, set design. I was also interested in percussion.
But my main thing was painting and drawing and the things that they basically taught at the museum school. So then you get out of school, but right before you get out you realize, maybe I’m not going to really make it as an artist. I better get some backup plan.
But the backup plan then wasn’t the kind of Expressive Arts therapy that was just kind of coming about. I had no idea that it was going on. So most of us became art teachers.
We got a teaching certificate, which made a lot of sense for me because I didn’t want to really be just only in a studio making art by myself. I really was a relational person. And I think part of that was being in those other art forms, too.
When you’re in drama and theater, you’re in groups of people. So I did that for quite a few years and then it was about the time to get a master’s degree in something, to move on, to expand things. I really enjoyed being an art teacher because I really got to know the students in ways that the math teacher and the English teacher didn’t.
And then I also found that magical thing that there were a lot of. I was in a public school, high school, a lot of those teenagers telling me through their artwork what was going on. And two different things happened that I can remember from way back then.
One of them was probably what we would call bipolar disorder now. And she was really showing me that not only in her personality but in the artwork would just shift through these very kind of energetic pieces and then almost depressed. I wasn’t really analyzing them, but I could see the difference and I could be there with her, watching her process.
So that was something that I brought to the school psychologist attention. And she got interventions. That was great.
But the other one was even more dramatic. It was a child teenager who was suicidal. And he started to kind of show things in the artwork that just made me feel uncomfortable for him, thinking he’s distressed.
And again, this was all guesswork. But then he finally because when you’re an art teacher, you’re right beside them. You’re relational with them.
Not the way a math teacher, an English teacher would be. They would be telling the whole class the lesson. You’re there with them by their side and found out that he really was about to take his own life.
And I thought, there’s something really remarkable here about this. So then there was a synchronistic event. At that point, an art therapy master’s degree program opened up in the area.
And I was on the west coast then. We were living in the Bay Area and an art therapy master’s program opened up. I had no idea what it was, but I signed up for it, said, this is this has got to be it.
This must be the next pathway. So that started me kind of into the field of Expressive Arts therapy. I have to say, though, back then it was probably a lot like play therapy.
Back then, people knew things about it. They knew it worked. But we didn’t have all the information we have now, so it was pretty simple.
So from then on, it was a long process of learning all the issues in mental health and how to be a therapist and how to apply this. But kind of fast forward, because I’m using this term expressive arts and expressive Arts Therapy. It’s a little different than just art therapy alone.
Expressive Arts Therapy is an integrative process similar to play therapy in that you’re taking multiple modalities and combining them somehow. So you’ve got visual art, got music and sound, you’ve got movement, you’ve got enactment, you’ve got creative writing, all these different things. And play, I think play is on that continuum and combining them in some way depending on who you’re working with.
In play therapy, the focus is more on children. But it’s obviously adaptable to adults. In Expressive Arts, it’s the same thing you work across the lifespan, but combining things in an integrative way.
So a lot of times I see it talked about in discussion groups. People talk about Expressive arts and I’m always like, okay, are you talking about the integrative approach? Are you just talking about you did this really interesting drawing activity or you did some drumming with somebody? So those are separate modalities. We don’t really think of those as expressive arts.
Expressive Arts is really that integrative approach. And I guess the reason I got further into that is over the last 15 years of working with the military. And they’re very active people.
So just doing things that were more passive and sitting and creating wasn’t really helping them as much with their trauma as putting them in different situations and integrating, doing active things, maybe moving, maybe making sounds, doing percussion, a lot of different kinds of senses that come into the expressive arts. So I think, again, it’s kind of like this parallel universe with play therapy because play therapists think on a lot of different levels about anything from maybe having an easel for painting, but also having a sand tray or having toys and games, having props that stimulate pretend play and enactment. Yeah, that’s kind of the fast forward over decades of kind of evolution.
I think part of the evolution also comes from all that we know about trauma now. And trauma has taught us a lot about what we need to do that’s interactive and sensory based. Yeah, there’s two questions that I have.
The first is as you were talking, so I have studying your work, I’ve often heard you use this idea of action oriented and I love that you just talked about that because we don’t typically use that language in the play therapy world, like being action oriented. I love how you just described it, that there’s some movement or some energy with it. Would you talk about that just a little bit more just because the idea of an intervention being action oriented, that just might be a different concept? No, it sets us apart, those of us that do that kind of work from, again, I say this all the time.
I said it today in another presentation. It was talk therapy is not bad. It’s really actually pretty effective for trauma work.
But it just goes so far. There’s things you can’t talk people into and by putting action into it, a couple of things happen. I mean, they get involved in it, their senses are engaged in it.
But also part of my work and I’m sure a lot of people that are watching or listening to this, they’re trauma informed in their approach. And trauma informed actually says that we are supposed to be co creators with whoever we’re working with. We’re supposed to empower them to be active participants in the therapy.
So I think that can happen in talk therapy. But wow, when you add the senses to it and you add the action and participation, saying to somebody mobilize in some way, even if it’s a small way of making a mark on a paper, but getting up and moving or doing something with both hands bilaterally, all that kind of work, that really adds something. And I’m just so surprised that a lot of people can.
I could never just be a talk therapist now I think like, okay, start in the arts, right? But maybe that’s the reason. But I don’t think so. I think I need to have people be engaged and feel like, wow, I’m working on this too.
I’m not just sitting and talking back and forth, which, again, can be effective, but does it tap everything we need to tap to somebody grow? I love how this idea of engaging the senses and engaging all parts of ourself, which following your work, I know that you have been immersing yourself more and more into interpersonal biology, understanding more about why does it work and all of that. Will you speak to that and then also make your way towards helping us really wrap our mind a little bit more around what’s going on with trauma integration? And I know you have a new way of conceptualizing what we know as the window tolerance. Would you make the conversation? Where was I just at so I can make a good segue? We were talking about involving the senses in a full body experience and going into the experience, which I know is intimately connected with what we now know from neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology.
Okay, so here’s one part of that. One part of it is because I watch the field of trauma neuroscientists and I’m not a neuroscientist. Interesting, a lot of my people in my tribe try to talk like brain scientists and, you know, no, we’re not.
But we pay attention to it and what the neuroscientists are doing that are trauma specialists in the field. And I would credit Bessel Vanderkoke is a colleague and a friend directing people in this way into the research. So a lot of researchers are starting to think about the topic of sensory integration.
Now, we used to always think about that. I thought about it as very interesting decades ago. I thought a lot of the children I was working with that were traumatized also had these sensory processing things going on.
But there was no connection between that. It was all about physical kinds of things and not psychological. Now the trauma field is getting very heavily into research on sensory integration as the foundation we need to lay before we get up here and start working with people on this cognitive level.
And I think like, oh, finally. Wow. And occupational therapy is thinking about that too.
They’re not just talking about how we do sensory work to help people with strokes or we do sensory work with children who are having sensory processing issues. They’re looking at it too, as like this might really help people regulate, calm down the body, learn to be relational, feel their body in space in a more healthy way, and that we need that foundation in order to get to the more cognitive kinds of things that a lot of therapists want to work with with traumatized individuals. So fascinating, and I just think it makes so much sense.
But it took all these years, apparently, to get to that. So I think that with any of us that are doing the action oriented thing. We’ve got to know what that’s about as it keeps emerging.
We’ve been doing it, but we haven’t had all the information yet that’s going to come out about that and about how important it is. So one of the things I think is a really good example for all of us. We’ve all been through the pandemic, and we were told to immobilize.
Right. I had a conversation with Bruce Perry about this early in the pandemic. We were on some presentation together, and that whole thing of telling us to distance and not get near people, and then it was almost like, stay in your house, all of that.
And we eventually got back out. We’re still going through that process. A lot of people are still having trouble with that, less so than we were a year ago and two years ago.
But we all had that experience of having our senses disrupted in a massive way, and that made me think, like, wow, a lot of what people with trauma, children with adverse events early on in life, they’ve all had this experience way before we got it, as a collective trauma. So we kind of know this. And so I think this is really interesting.
Now it’s coming about that we should study exteroception. All the senses, the interoception, the felt sense inside the proprioception and the balance all get disturbed by psychological trauma, not just physical trauma. Yeah.
Kathy, what I love what you’re saying is inherent in everything you’re talking about are the expressive arts as a vehicle for integration, that they just in and of themselves have the capacity to address these foundational or fundamental pieces inside all of us that need to be worked with. Well, not to get into the weeds, but we’ve got neuroscience telling us that now. But cultural anthropology always told us that, and we never paid attention.
Humans did this well before talk therapy. They danced together, they sang together, they made rituals together, they played together. I mean, all that we think about, okay, that’s play or that’s an art form, it had another purpose.
They were trying to also find equilibrium. And there’s cultures around the world still obviously doing all of that. We all do it.
I mean, if people are a member of a certain church and you go to sing together, okay. It’s about the religious experience of the spiritual connection, but it’s also just about the connection. Totally feeling like we’re in rhythm together, we’re singing together, we’re in synchrony.
Yeah. So all of that’s always been there. Now we have the science for it.
But before, humans just did it to feel better. Yeah. You just said the word synchrony and use the word is it rhythmic synchronization.
Did I get that right? Yeah. Those two things are really important. The rhythm piece is like the basic thing we get.
I just read a couple of studies about this, about it’s even eight weeks after we’re conceived, we start to develop rhythm. Well, it’s obvious because we hear our mother’s heartbeat. So we start to get that, and we start to get movement.
That was the first movement starts, and then touch starts then, too. So we get regulated before we’re born. If we’re lucky, we get a good, positive regulation.
I think a lot of who we see that come back to us as children, teenagers, adults, they’re looking for that. They didn’t get it. It got disrupted then, and maybe it got disrupted in those first three or four years of life.
But that’s a really important thing, I think, in reading some of the things and listening to some of the things you say about and I hope people get this, that okay, there’s all these activities we can do. But the most important thing is the regulation through the person. That co regulation.
The other regulation doesn’t really ever exist until that co regulation happens. And synchrony is one of those ways. So some people, well, you know, prozity, they just use their voice to try to help establish that rhythm.
But we can do all kinds of other active things that involve rhythm and synchrony and then train, then it starts to entrain that person’s heart rate, breathing, all these things. So I often wonder why people don’t I’m sure you get the request through. You get these requests for do you have an activity for such and such? Fill in the blank.
Yeah, probably. But you’re the intervention, right? You’re the co regulator, and that’s the most important thing. And then when you could teach that and transfer it to a caregiver to be with that child or a couple or however yeah, exactly.
The technique is just the protocol is just a protocol. Someone’s got to bring it to life. You can buy one on Amazon, $20.
That other thing is really what creates change. It creates what we call healing. I don’t know.
So synchrony is one of those pieces. Some people call it attunement, but it’s all for that attachment and feeling safe inside and attuned and synchronous with other people. I just love the words, the rhythmic synchronization.
You can even feel it in the words themselves. I just think that’s just a beautiful way of describing attunement or talking about that. Okay, Kathy, so I’m going to move us to where I know I asked you a really long question about ten minutes ago, but I’m just so curious and fascinated by this.
So we’re talking about co regulation. We know that self regulation is dependent upon co regulation. We know that there’s an attunement piece that goes with that.
And with that is often this discussion about developing the capacity, with the window of tolerance. And so I would love for you to share with us your insights on how maybe we can think about that in a little bit of a different way when we’re thinking about trauma, trauma integration, because it’s really quite lovely how you’re talking about it now. Yeah.
And I thought about this for a lot of years, and quite frankly, here’s the honest story about thinking about what I call the circle of capacity. The program online came about called Canva. I don’t know, you might know about Canva where you can make graphics.
And I think here I go backwards to where I started out as a visual person and able to kind of fool around with that in a very user friendly way and think out, like, why am I trying to sort out this idea? Well, the first reason actually was what I was hearing from people I was working with who like to hear about models. They’re intelligent people that are suffering from trauma. And I would start to present talk about the Dan Siegel’s window of tolerance, which came about about in 2009.
And we all really have used that framework. It’s a good framework, but that word tolerance just seemed to get stuck in my throat. And I thought, how can I say to somebody, for example, I mean, here’s probably on the continuum of awful, pretty awful circumstance for female military, for example, who have had multiple sexual assaults, I don’t think I can use tolerance or endurance or expanding your endurance or coping or whatever.
We’re talking about something else here. Now, the whole reasoning behind that window of tolerance model is are people hyperactivated or are they dissociated and numbed out, or are they both and helping them expand a window of being in a good place, of being in rested, alertness or calm or whatever. Their feel good state is widening that.
But I think what influenced me is if we’re doing active things with people, we are building capacity. And I thought, why not? Let’s have a little reframe here because this tolerance word doesn’t seem exactly trauma informed, but it doesn’t seem actually to apply to doing active things with people because they are building these skill sets. So a lot of people are trying to build regulation, whether it’s the self regulation or putting it together with what it needs to be put together, which is co regulation and trying to get that capacity built.
And then also the idea of we can do symptom reduction. We can help people get away from those bad moments more and more, hopefully by giving them some kinds of strategies. But aren’t we build we need to be building another capacity there which also replaces all that symptom stuff, that reactions.
So why aren’t we talking about it’s really interesting. In literature, we don’t talk that much about what I call restorative practices or states of being joy, enlivenment, empowerment, self compassion, curiosity and playfulness, because all those are really related to our sense of being. You know, I thought this is really interesting.
I don’t think that most of the people that have adopted, including Dan Siegel, the window of tolerance as an idea are against any of that but they haven’t put it into that know as a goal for people because it’s a human right to feel that way. It’s a human right for children, for teenagers, for adults to all experience those things. When they experience such things such as curiosity or playfulness I know they’re getting better because they’re starting to replace those reactions with things that curiosity playfulness, when it’s truly spontaneous is without fear and fear is what so many people come with in their bodies that they can’t get to those places.
So the other thing I like is a circle, because I always say, like, okay, you’ve got a circle and stuff’s going to come along and maybe the circle is going to get smaller again. But what we’re looking at is widening that circle for all these capacities for you and trying to find something in the expressive work that maybe you really embrace that you can now remember in your body. I can do this or this really made me happy when I created this or this kind of movement or music really brings on that joy and enlivenment for me.
I have a right to give myself that and the bad things still may happen because they all happen to all of us but I like to see it as that circle instead of the window. The window often felt like a little bit like oh, dropping the blinds. The circle feels more expansive.
Kathy, when you’re explaining this concept to clients, I know that you don’t use like, well, we’re going to expand your the like you’re hearing you like that doesn’t resonate really well for many people, particularly trauma survivors. So what is the language that you use with clients? Yeah do you know? You probably have used one and some people are familiar with it because of Peter Levine using it. It’s called Hoberman Circle yeah, I wish I had had on my desk right now and it expands and contracts.
I think that’s a really useful tool. He uses it for breathing and showing stress and how people can get stuck too in trauma but I think that’s a useful model and I usually just have my graphic too. People seem to like to look at the graphic and I say these are all possibilities.
Right now you might think it’s pretty remote to feel curious or joyful but as you develop these capacities and engage in all these different novel things that we’re going to try I’m going to say based on experience, you’re going to find one that is going to enliven you. I think the thing I like about thinking this way, I’m kind of selfish I want to give hope. Somebody doesn’t feel that you believe that there’s hope for something to change.
Even in that moment when they’re still really in the dark place. They’re hearing that because actually, it’s interesting. I’ve learned this from children because I’ve seen children in domestic violence early in my career.
They’ve become adults and contacted me and remembered what we did and what I said. And sometimes I think, like, wow, I did not know that had any impact on you at all. I think we’ve all had this experience where we hear from former clients or patients, they heard hope somehow, even though they didn’t look like they heard it.
And you walk away sometimes from sessions thinking, did I do anything? I must have failed in the session. I don’t see anything reaction from them. They take it in.
I think most people do take it in and hear that and feel that, sense it. I’ve often felt that sometimes our field, we’re trained to see the problem. That’s what we’re trained, right? We’re trained to look for what’s wrong, or we’re trained to look for what’s not going well.
Even when we’re establishing goals with clients, it’s about the reduction of the so called bad thing. And I think so beautiful about what you’re saying is, well, yes, but what’s the result of that? What’s the result of if this reduces, then it means this increases, and can we have conversation over here? Rather than just staying focused on the things of, well, we’re reducing this, or here’s the problem. And it’s really beautiful, Kathy.
How are we expanding the quality of life? We all want to hear that. And sometimes we can just barely hear it and think, wow, am I ever going to get there? But I think when you’re the facilitator, the psychotherapist, the coach, the educator, whoever it is, that we have to demonstrate that somehow over and over and over again so that that person starts to incorporate it. And when they’re ready, I see them walk in the door and they have a playful step or they come in, they crack a joke.
I know all of a sudden, oh, wow, something changed here. They’re being playful with me. They’re showing me their joy.
Or they’re able to be curious. I think that’s the most interesting one of all that we have to offer in these kinds of more experiential situations. We can ask people to be curious through talk.
But if we have some kind of thing in front of us curious about what that sound of that drum is curious about what this new art material I just put out will do if I make a mark with it, that starts that process of I think when you’re curious, you can’t be fearful. So even if it’s just for like, a couple of seconds, you’re curious. You’re not fearful then.
And more and more of that as we keep building that there are more and more moments of that curiosity and not the fear. Would you be able to I know I’m putting you on the spot here. Would you be able to take us through almost like a case, if you will, where you used expressive art, therapies or some combination, and how you were able.
To see through the use of the expressive arts, how you were able to see exactly what we’re talking about now, how they really were able to expand their capacity for joy or curiosity. Yeah, it’s hard to explain. Well, especially in a short time, a case, but I can tell you an outcome.
I mean, kind of with working with military and one that was fairly recent, going through a lot of these different things. And actually, his reaction to wanting to do more and have a sense of mastery was through using drumming, doing percussion like movement also, and yoga. So I just have to search out which thing is going to be helpful for some other people.
It might be they get more into making art in some way. Some people, there’s a lot of actually military that start to engage in theater, they like to get up and do dramatic readings or actually be in theater productions to kind of tell their stories in that way. But what he came about with, and he articulated it very well, it’s pretty common in a lot of the military going through this kind of work.
He was finally able to reengage in play on two levels with himself, but with his own children. And all the time that he had post traumatic stress, he did not know how to do that. He could not make that engagement and he had to find that playfulness in himself.
So we did all kinds of playful things, engaging with each other, sometimes just doing like drumming together and just being silly with that, but also movement and a lot of other different media to experience that. And when he finally got to that place and came in and said, I think I’m ready now to stop this for a while, I know I can always come back if I have problems, but I’m able now to be with my family and actually sit down with my children and play again, because I know what that is in myself. That’s the kind of statement that at the end of a lot of work, because there was a lot of work that went into his therapy EMDR.
I mean, there were a lot of different parts to it that he had to go through to manage anger, to manage the depression, to manage an addiction. So it was a long, long road, but that’s where it really came down to replacing okay, so he got a hold of all those things, the anger management started to take hold, the depression was treated, the addiction taken care of. But that other piece, that was the last thing to come along, to feel like now I have this capacity to inhabit myself in a whole different way, that was gone.
He was hollow inside and without that sense of curiosity, of playfulness, of being alive and yeah, that’s how he gained back all his relationships with a very patient family that stuck with him. So beautiful. I think that’s a repetitive theme in a lot of different ways.
It’s different for different people. But yeah, I see that sense of being able to retake my body and mind over with joy, allow myself that a lot of people that have had, especially in the military that have had severe trauma, there’s a lot of guilt and shame. And to be able to retake your body again in a positive way and have that joy and enlivenment and empowerment is a big deal.
Yeah, it’s a huge deal. Wow. Beautiful.
As you were describing it, I found myself even just getting a little emotional, just even at the idea, I think a lot to come alive like that again after. And I think it’s interesting because that’s why I think play is so important also for adults. I think in the play therapy field, I always think, like, gosh, it’s very much geared to working with children and families, but the children are the focus.
But don’t the adults really need to have this experience, too, in some way? Because it generates that reconnection with others around them, too, that creates that engagement and that synchrony and social engagement with people around them by having that within themselves, knowing what that yeah. Beautiful. Kathy, as we’re talking here, and I know that it’s a lot of play therapists that are listeners to this podcast or individuals that work with children, do you have a message or just some? Like, if you could say something to us as a community, what would you want to say to us as a community? Don’t worry so much about buying the next activity book.
I know that sounds harsh because I know a lot of people are writing them as I speak with earnestness and wanting to help other professionals know some approaches. But it really comes down to the relationship to think relationally, but also think through frameworks, too, of why am I doing this? I don’t always need to have an activity. Sometimes I can just come in and sit down and take the risk of just being there and seeing what people want to do.
And the other thing is, I think it’s all big learning curve. It always has been. I still am learning, like, all kinds of things constantly.
You need to be familiar with a lot of the props. Like, people buy props, they buy drums or they buy this, that, or the other art materials. You got to sit down and play with those things, too, for a long time before you start to introduce them.
It’s a real process, and it’s okay. I think what’s really good about what we do in Expressive Arts Play Therapy, we have a way of being able to be in a session in a way that also feels good for us. And I don’t think we should deny ourselves that.
I mean, it’s not about us. It’s about who’s in front of us. But I always think, like, wow, I get to move with this person.
I get to make sounds with this person. If I just had to sit there and just talk, I don’t think I would feel enlivened at the end of the session either. And I think that that’s okay for us to think that way.
As professionals that bring in experiential work, we really are lucky. I really feel fortunate that way because I think the times when I’ve just conducted sessions that are just talking, it’s been pretty exhausting. It can be very exhausting.
You have ten minutes in between to go to the next. It’s tough. But I think just introducing some of this actually is helpful for the therapist.
You really engage with the person, but you engage yourself. You get to move your body with them. Our own senses get activated.
Yeah, you get to stand up and do something or I don’t know. I just think we’re really fortunate that way. So I hope people are just in the present about that and not worry.
I know new professionals, and I know this. I remember being a new professional, thinking like, what the heck am I going to do? What am I going to do? And I have to say, when I started, there weren’t a lot of activity books, so maybe that was good. But I was asking people constantly, like, what did you do? How did you do that? What did you introduce? But the quicker you can get away from that and just be with people and think about that relationship first, that’s what they’re really there for.
And they may have a hard time with it because they’re afraid of people. Maybe people have hurt them. That’s what the worst trauma when somebody else has hurt you.
But that’s what they want from us. So we can be clumsy with whatever we introduce, but if we’re authentic with that relational piece and that co regulation, which I think now, I really think there are a lot of people that talk about, and I’ve talked about it too, self regulation coming first. No, it can’t really happen that way.
If it doesn’t happen in the co regulation, there’s not going to be self regulation. So if you just think about yourself that way. Well, Kathy, for our listeners that may want to replace or add to some of the books that they have that have all of the checklists and protocols, I know that you have some books that might enhance this part of their understanding of how to be with their clients.
Will you share with us? I mean, I know that I really want to highlight you just had a rewrite of one of your best books, and I know that it’s out there. Would you share with us a little bit? There wasn’t a rewrite. There’s a Handbook of I have it here, actually.
A handbook of expressive Arts therapy. Again, actually, people that are looking for both, there are a lot of people talking in this book because it’s an edited book about different approaches. There’s a couple of chapters by play therapists talking about kind of the interface with different expressive forms.
So in a way, it’s not the worst case scenario of no activities. People are talking about their approaches in that way in that book. I really enjoyed putting that one together because I thought we need kind of a definition of what this is.
And I thought play therapists fit into this. So that’s why I don’t define people as who’s an Expressive Arts therapist and who isn’t, because obviously the two authors that are play therapists in the book identify as play therapists. They were kind of surprised.
I asked them. I said, but it’s so close to what we do. Okay, just please do it for me.
But I am working on a rewrite because you mentioned understanding children’s drawings. That’s what I’m working on. Yeah, I think that’s why I have a rewrite in my brain that needs a rewrite.
It’s so funny to kind of read it. And sometimes I’m reading and I’m like, oh, my goodness, that’s 20 years ago and how much we know now. A lot of things have happened to children, and they’ve shown us through their drawings a lot more new information combined with what we know about trauma.
Because if you think about it, 20 years ago, I started kind of right before 911 and after 911, September 11 with the terrorist attacks, we learned a lot about how children survived that and how the importance of having a support system really showed what children were going to do better than others. Then hurricane Katrina came. These are all these disasters, right, that came along.
Children were betrayed and left and abandoned. Their families were abandoned. So we really saw a different kind of thing in the drawings then.
Now fast forward over the last few years, we had the immigration issue. Quite an interesting story there in how children have depicted that. And now we’re getting information, unfortunately.
It’s unfortunate how much children have to go through with the refugees from Ukraine. Yeah. So there’s all that that’s come about and then our understanding of the brain.
So that’s the one I’m working on now. But then there is a workbook. I’m working on a workbook so people can have hope.
It won’t be activities, but it will be a workbook. And I want to say to our listeners, I know that the book that Kathy is talking about is Understanding the Drawings is 20 years old, but listeners, it’s one of my favorite books, even though I know that there’s updates that you want to add and all that. It was a really profound book.
I just want to share Kathy in my own education because it helped me get curious, and it helped me move out of analysis, and it helped me move out of trying to interpret and more into being with and staying really open and curious. So, listeners, it’s a really invaluable book. Yeah.
Most of it’s still okay, but when you write it, you find the mindsets that are very cringeworthy and you’re like, oh, my goodness, now, why didn’t I know that then? But this next edition is going to be more like the same kind of focus of how do we understand and have that conversation? But now I know a lot more from the trauma work about how you have the conversation so you can find out what’s going on. And the other piece is thinking about how do we give children, through drawing, sensory experiences that create attachment? Beautiful. Yeah.
And that was not even on the menu then. I mean, it really wasn’t in any of the teaching and any of my colleagues or anything. I didn’t think of it.
And then attachment has just grown and grown and grown in the literature. And how do we use that relationship? We’re having somebody create something. Both of these books that we’re talking about, the Understanding Children’s Drawing and then the Expressive Arts Therapy, I’m assuming they can be found on.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Pretty much any place where you could get a book. Yeah, but always look, and I’m not pitching the publisher, but Guilford Press is really good about keeping the price lower than Amazon and they still have the free shipping.
There you go, listeners. Yeah. Look at Guilford first.
Just because Amazon isn’t always the cheapest. Not about you don’t get that much royalty from books. So it doesn’t matter to me.
But Guilford they’re doing actually to the end of December for students in undergraduate and graduate school. 50% off. Oh, listeners.
Yeah, do that. That’s all their books. I’m not just pitching this one or that one.
It’s all their books. Anything else that you would love to share with our Know listeners? If you see Kathy’s name on a keynote or conference or sign up for her section, go study directly with Kathy. Are there other things? Other things that you’d love our listeners to know? Resources where they can find you? Anything like that? Only on the internet.
But next year there’ll be more live trainings, which is very exciting. Right. We’re finally coming out of the mist.
I mean, we’ve come out of it this year and gone to things. And I know, like, the Play Therapy conference was really well attended, which was really wonderful to kind of see on social media the joy of people getting together and doing interactive stuff. Amazing.
So there is going to be, and I don’t have the information yet, a big trauma conference at Oxford University that I’ll be at next September. So this is how the world’s reopening. And there’ll be all the Luminaries there.
I don’t count myself among them. The Luminaries will be there. But it’s so exciting to go out into the world again and do these things with people.
Zoom has been great. Thank goodness it was here during these years. But to be in this room, you must have had that experience in October.
Going time to get back into action. That’s what you’re talking about. Time to get back into playfulness.
But again, that’s the thing. We can’t just live on these screens with each other. It’s been a really good substitute and made it accessible for a lot of people.
But going to do these live action things, the action oriented piece, doing them together, wow. I’m really grateful for that. Now I really see, like, wow, what this is about, why humans need yeah.
Well, Kathy, I just want to say thank you again for joining me for this conversation. Thank you for having this conversation about Expressive Arts Therapy. Listeners, I imagine that you had AHA moments and connecting dots and places of curiosity as Kathy was speaking.
I know I sure did. Thank you just for continuing to be curious yourself and offering more education for all of us, Kathy, so that we can all keep learning and growing together in this field. It’s a real honor to have you as a you.
This has been fun. Okay, listeners, I’m going to invite all of you to take a breath wherever you are and go find some joy. Go do something that enlivens your spirit, that makes you feel alive.
Be well. And, you know, I say this at the end of every podcast, listeners, you are the most important toy in the playroom. You’re very, very important.
