2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
The symptom is throwing the flag. Art therapy methods for dealing with psychosomatic diseases. Author's technique.
I conduct a work shop with this name within the framework of the specialization "Art Therapeutic Methods of Working with Psychosomatic Diseases and Pain Symptoms". The idea of creating this art-therapeutic technique, like many other techniques that I present in my training program on psychosomatics, was born to me during my practical work in hospitals of medical institutions, when I met new arrivals, as they are called, "primary patients ". During the first consultation, I observed their non-verbal manifestations: facial expressions, autonomic reactions, micromovements of the limbs, gait, posture, voice timbre.
Before my eyes, such unique non-verbal dramas were unfolding, as if each patient played his own, unknown to me, only known to him musical instrument, as if each of them conducted his own orchestra or was the director of his film, lived his life within the same " laws of disease ".
A metaphor was born in my imagination: "The symptom is like a small state on planet Earth, and maybe on some other planet in the solar system." But one thing was interesting for me to understand within the framework of this metaphor: how this state lives, what laws operate on its territory, what the inhabitants of this country look like, what are their customs, fates, what emotions are legal in this state, and what are not, and, finally, who rules this state, what are the forms of government: is it a monarchy, republic, democracy, dictatorship, presidential republic or presidential-parliamentary, what laws and regulations are issued by the rulers of this country, is there capital punishment, repression, freedom of speech in this state? Many other things interested me in the process of revealing this metaphor, in which Symptom was a collective image of the ruler of this state (disease).
From theory, we know that any symptom is a message encoded in bodily signs from the unconscious of our psyche. And the task of the psychotherapist is to help the patient decipher this message, translate it from an incomprehensible language into an understandable one. To do this, I used a metaphor: since Symptom is the ruler of a certain fantastic state, this state has all the attributes inherent in the state, and therefore has a flag as a symbol of the state.
The "Symptom throws the flag" work-shop has three working modalities: the drawing itself, the body-oriented part and the narrative (creation of a creative text).
The first thing I suggest to the patient is to raise a flag on the main building of the state. Of course, as an art therapist observing the unique set of non-verbal bodily reactions of each individual who is admitted to the hospital, I assume that the flag that "throws out" the symptom will be just as unique. And I ask you to paint this symptom with paints.
Whole dramas unfold on the canvases of these flags … Not only colors and shapes, shapes, names appear, but often even words and whole phrases that give us clues.
The second stage of work is as follows. I ask the patient to imagine how a Symptom with this Flag wanders the streets of the city, goes to the patient's work, office, home, moves from room to room, visits friends, goes to a concert or cinema. I ask the patient to see his gait, posture, facial expressions, to hear the timbre of his voice, micromovements of the body. I ask him to become this Symptom and, taking the flag in his hands, walk around the office with his gait, show how he moves, how he carries his flag: "Become this symptom for a while and show his movements, gait …".
An example would be appropriate here. A middle-aged patient diagnosed with panic attacks drew a very bright, colorful, attention-grabbing flag. There was a lot of romance in this drawing, beautiful flowers, scarlet, plump, seductive lips, a man on one knee in front of a woman hands her a bouquet of roses … and in the corner there is an inscription: "Love", crossed out with a black line. The gait of this woman with the flag was like walking on a catwalk: straight posture, a step from the hip, swaying like waves of the sea, hips and, barely perceptible, a smile on her face, which she shyly covered with the flag.
I asked her to look at herself from the side, as if in a mirror, and see herself walking with a flag in this gait, which the facilitator carefully portrayed for her (her partner is an observer in the group, if the work is individual, the facilitator can be a therapist), she cried out in surprise: "I do not have enough attention and love of my husband, I carry everything on my shoulders - business, homework, but he does nothing, I do not feel like a woman!" She immediately realized that the disease gives her a legal opportunity to be a weak woman, to receive the love and care of her husband.
Moving further in this work, I invite patients to write an essay in which I ask them to describe the entire state of the country, which is ruled by their symptom or illness, describing the ruler, his laws, people's customs, etc. So, we come to the third modality of this technique - narrative text.
In my workshop "Symptom Throws the Flag" I set myself the task of conveying the degree of emotional depth that we achieve in the process of work. In my opinion, this technique can be classified as expressive, cathartic, and therefore there are some limitations for its application. Although this technique is effective when working with psychosomatic patients, I would not recommend using it in working with psychiatric patients. The possibilities of this technique make it possible to apply it both in group and in individual work.
(c) Yulia Latunenko
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