*Alongside Karla's interview, we have placed the artwork of @poethecreator, a talented artist that has experienced the child welfare system and is currently a full time practicing artist.
Mia, A Home Within Staff: Karla, if you can introduce yourself and tell us how long you’ve been with A Home Within and what made you decide to become a volunteer with us?
Karla: I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist, I work primarily with children but really with all ages. I became an A Home Within volunteer about three years ago around when I was first launching my private practice. I was just starting out and didn’t have a lot of clients yet, so I had time that I wanted to offer in this way. I also wanted the support that I was going to get from being part of the A Home Within community. There’s a consultation group that I joined, and all that has helped me feel connected, especially after working in community mental health. It’s kind of lonely sometimes as a private practice therapist.
Chrissy, A Home Within Staff: Yes, and especially with most things being over Zoom in this post-pandemic age. We’re so glad to hear you found some community after joining A Home Within. Can you give us some of your background on how you decided to become a therapist, and how you chose to use expressive and creative arts in your therapy?
Karla: I worked in community mental health, with kids on the spectrum and with teenagers in a residential treatment center, so I found that by the time I graduated I was working in mental health, and realized that if it was a career I wanted to get any further in, I needed to go to grad school. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, I looked at Play Therapy, started to take the prerequisites and was hooked. I loved psychology!
I’ve always been interested in creativity for myself. Poetry is probably the first creative expression that really helped me through high school. It helped me express myself and feel connected to others. Being an artistic person or an artist, or going to see art, loving the art from artists that I knew — it’s always been a draw to me. I didn’t know about expressive arts therapy until further into becoming a therapist. I was using art and working with art therapists, but I learned that expressive arts uses all the different modalities, not just drawing or painting, but music and movement, pretty much everything you could think of.
Mia, A Home Within Staff: That’s great, you’ve touched on so many themes that connect really well to this project and how the combination of therapy and art can bring healing to individuals. Is there anything else you’d like to add on to what the term “art therapy” means to you, or in your case “creative expressive arts therapy,” if you had to synthesize those terms?
Karla: Words don’t always help us, we often have a hard time putting words to our experience, especially trauma. I think that art helps us be in our bodies but also externalize the experience so we can see it out of ourselves and realize that we’re capable of integrating it and not just trying to avoid it or be scared of it, but trying to integrate it into our everyday lives.
I think trauma is something that everybody experiences, even the small traumas and intergenerational trauma. Youth are often starting to realize that their families have a lot more trauma than they realized, so trying to understand themselves as individuals helps, as well as their connection to their families. I keep using the word connect but I also think it’s an integration. You might want to start differentiating or getting away from your family or creating your own family but you don’t know why all these things effect you. So, looking at your generational healing, a lot of that can be done through art as a healing tool.
Chrissy, A Home Within Staff: I loved that so much. I got chills when you talked about how art and creative self expression helps externalize the trauma and help you see it as an observer outside of you, while still being in your body. It’s powerful, thank you. How do you personally approach the topic of healing in your own life and in what ways do you use art for your own personal healing?
Karla: It changes almost monthly or weekly sometimes. Right now, a lot of my creative expression comes through writing. I joined a group of therapists who write for healing. It’s a workshop where we can share, it’s been really healing but also helped me utilize the storytelling that’s always been inside of me. Being able to share it with people and hear their positive feedback has been so encouraging and connecting. There’s that word again. But yeah, it changes, I love using percussion, I have an arts studio where I can have things on hand. Sometimes I have to curb myself when I go into a crafts store. I like making art accessible to people, especially when they’re like, “I can’t draw,” I mean, neither can I, I’m still drawing stick figures, and that’s ok. It doesn’t matter, even if you just want to take paint and mix it. A lof of kids I work with like to just mix the paint and mix the colors, which can be very healing for them, very sensory. Again, that connects you to your senses and to your body.
Mia, A Home Within Staff: That’s interesting you mention how there’s this notion that you have to have a level of technical skill in order to practice art. I’ve often heard people undermining their creative ability because they think they can’t draw or something. Are there any challenges like this that you encounter in your practice, and how might you address those?
Karla: Well, I do have resistance sometimes to doing art. I finally got this wonderful office that has lots of room for movement, and sometimes it’s hard. I’m very child-centered and client-centered, which means I let the client direct, so it’s hard sometimes to get the client to do art. But then I also realize that I can sometimes make suggestions and I also provide everything [in the room]. I try to always remind myself of something Lisa Don says, "I’m the most important 'toy' in the room." It encourages me to just laugh and be silly. And you know sometimes I am challenged to just let myself get on their level and be, you know, a little out of control with them, and then bring it back and contain it. That’s sometimes scary for me as a professional person.
Chrissy, A Home Within Staff: Do you have any particular moment or moments that you can look to and say, “Oh, wow. That was a very poignant example of the power of creative expression in your therapy practice?”
Karla: I have so many moments. I guess just using music… There’s just so many moments! But I do like using movement and color and feeling words. In this one moment where this kid was just playing with a musical instrument, I just realized that he would be willing to play. I asked him if I could give him a word and ask him to make a sound to go with that word, and he was like, “Yeah,” and he kept doing it and wanted me to keep giving him words. It was like he had this ability to just express that feeling, word, or color. So, that’s just one example that I found really gave me chills. It was like, “Wow, this kid has this innate ability to take the word and really express it in this way.” It was really beautiful.
And then there was this other [moment]. You know, sometimes it’s just very simple like throwing a ball back and forth and then I just do a random association game, or something like that. And it all is part of the integration, too, of using different modalities, because you’re using movement, you’re using your mind, you’re using your imagination and it turns into storytelling, and with expressive arts therapy, you just have to be willing to go in whatever direction they take it.
Mia, A Home Within Staff: I guess to take a step back from your own practice, how would you say you’ve seen the larger field of creative expressive therapy and/or arts therapy [evolve]? Like if there’s been a trend that has evolved in that field or changes that you’ve seen. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Karla: Yeah, I’d say art therapy and expressive arts therapy started off a lot in health facilities and treatment centers and stuff, and now it’s becoming more open. People are starting to realize how in individual practice, it’s starting to be seen as not just a side of therapy, but an actual therapy modality that has a huge impact. I mean we have so many different healing tools and approaches and orientations, and art therapy I think now can be seen in companion with other different trauma therapies like EMDR [Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing] and Internal Family Systems. The best way sometimes to express [that trauma] can be very embodied: to use art when a trauma experience comes up and we’re able to witness it and we want to deepen it through art in a way that I think provides meaning. I think, again, expressive arts therapy and art therapy for me personally, I’ve been able to have just a lot of meaning that I feel I can look back on. I have a body of work that is not meant for anybody but me necessarily, or to share within a community, but that’s meaningful. That meaning is important to me. So, yeah. I think it’s no longer just a side thing that you do. It’s been integrated.
Chrissy, A Home Within Staff: Just a question that we’re interested in, have you found in your own practice, or as an observer of others’ creative arts therapy practice, that identities such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, things like that, do they have a big factor or influence in your approach to your practice?
Karla: Oh, definitely. I guess the more concrete example is just when I think about all of the intergenerational trauma and how a lot of that trauma becomes seen as a cultural phenomenon, and then when you do use art or creative arts you realize that you can create a whole different connection to that identity that isn’t about the trauma, but about the healing and about the story. People can see and witness in their own lives how their healing journey has been impacted by their parents and their grandparents.
You know, right now I’m thinking about a client and also I’m thinking about the book Healing Racialized Trauma by Resmaa Menakem. And my one client—well, I don’t want to get into specifics here, but I know that a lot of her healing has been to use poetry and art to tell her story about her ancestors and the trauma they've been through, and also trying to understand her individual journey and how that’s connected and how it’s different, and where she wants to go. It helps give her some clarity.
Mia, A Home Within Staff: I think we just have one last question for you, which is, we’re curious if there’s something that you’re most proud of that you offer in your therapy practice? Or it could be multiple things!
Karla: Well, I mean, I do love my office! I guess my ability to keep connected to the people and keep community going and make sure I’m not feeling too alone in this has been something I’m proud of, because it helps me tremendously to not feel like I’m too solitary. And that’s not my natural way of being, to be honest. I had to push myself a little to reach out and just to ask for help. So I’m proud of that, because it’s not easy to ask for help.
