pinksoil, I really like how you and your T used the painting for therapy. I think that technique would work really well with me too. To me, it seems safer to reveal things in that context than "straight out." I sometimes have trouble saying things straight out. For example, I can use a discussion of my dreams to say and reveal things to him that I can't come out and directly say. I think therapy through the painting is similar.

Once, very early on with my T, he used a painting in his office to compare to what I was experiencing in my life. It was a painting of a glorious sunset, and he said to me that divorce is like a sunset. The relationship is setting, sinking from view beneath the horizon, but it is flaming out in beautiful colors, often dying in a blaze. This is what I was experiencing in my marriage, as even though my husband and I were coming to the end, we were having some good times together, the best in years, and it was bewildering and very confusing to me. The sunset painting helped me understand what was happening.

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Because I have always responded well through art, music, dreams, and poetry.

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Do you think you might use art therapy when you are a practicing counselor? My daughter's counselor uses art therapy with her. They paint together sometimes or make collages and talk as they do it, sometimes painting feelings or people or events from her life.