Summary: Our efforts at the beginning of a counseling relationship are intense as well as time consuming. Counselors are asked to consider their clients’ culture as well as their history, physical condition, and relationships. In the process of assessment, we often discover social conditions that can derail our efforts as counselors. Hunger, abuse, discrimination, homelessness, poverty, lack of transportation, and violence are real factors in our clients’ lives. Not only do these conditions influence our clients’ mental health, they can actually be the cause mental illness. We can refer our clients to resources, but often their situation is so dire that they are unable to access those resources. On our own time, we can take action to address the troubles in our society, but what if there were a way to take social action within the counseling relationship? In this workshop, we will begin to explore how art-making can facilitate the bringing of social action into the counseling process.
Objectives:
- Participants will become familiar with social action as both an internal and external event.
- Participants will experience art tasks designed to raise their awareness of the need for social action within themselves.
Participants will experience art tasks designed to develop a sense of self-worth and empowerment within their clients.
Speaker:
Vicki Williams-Patterson, MCAT, ATR-BC, LP-AT
COUNSELOR & ART THERAPIST
Consulting Art Therapist & Open Studio Facilitator
Vicki Williams-Patterson is a Board Certified Art Therapist and a Licensed Professional Counselor. She has worked as an art therapist since 1983. Her graduate education at Hahnemann University was strongly rooted in developmental psychology and psychodynamic theory, and she has continued with that orientation. Since 1990, she has been conducting seminars on the therapeutic uses of art in the counseling process at local, regional and national conferences. Since receiving her graduate degree in Art Therapy, she has engaged in advanced professional training in the areas of trauma recovery, Jungian psychology, and Sand Tray Process. In November 2009 she received the American Art Therapy Association’s Annual Award for Clinical Services. She is the past President of the Texas Mental Health Counselors Association, a division of the Texas Counseling Association.
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