Creative Mindfulness Techniques for Clinical Trauma Work

Insights and Applications for Mental Health Practitioners

Corinna M. Costello

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000435887
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

Using evidence-based creative mindfulness techniques (CMT), this book acts as a useful guide for clinical mental health practitioners seeking to build resilience levels in clients recovering from trauma. It examines the effectiveness of the CMT approach, providing applicable art therapy techniques to enhance the therapist's toolbox for clinical effectiveness.

Combining a psychodynamic and neurobiological clinical lens, this book helps practitioners recognize and utilize creativity in dealing with trauma exposure, its cultural considerations, and its consequences on the individual, family, and the system. It also provides insights into the neurophysiological impact of mindfulness techniques on the brain. Chapters explore the clinician's role in the treatment of trauma, wellness, and the building of resiliency, creativity, and alternative approaches to changing neural pathways, positive psychology, and more. A collection of narrative case studies and guidance for specific activities to be used with diverse clients ensures easy practical usage of the theories explored.

Clinical mental health practitioners who work with clients suffering from PTSD, clinical trauma, stress, and anxiety will find this book essential. Readers may also be interested in Healing from Clinical Trauma Using Creative Mindfulness Techniques: A Workbook of Tools and Applications, which can be used on its own or as a companion to this book.

1 Introduction of the Creative Mindfulness Approach

DOI: 10.4324/9781003030591-1

I remember attending an art therapy conference several years ago. The speaker began presenting on the neuronal activity of the human brain. On the giant screen in the front, the audience saw large neuronal scans of a human brain. I remember the “aha” moment. It was my first time experiencing a large room of 300 people and hearing no discernable sound. At that moment, all I could hear was a large group of curious people simultaneously gasping for air in the same instant.

That moment stands out to me in my professional career in mental health counseling and art therapy. There was visual evidence or proof of what happens to the brain during intentional creative moments. On the large screen, I could see the neurons firing and wiring in action. There was a noticeable difference in the amount and the movement of the neurons and the neuronal pathways as the individual engaged in the creative activity. The treatment of making art and being creative was causing an alteration in the neurophysiology of the brain.

This moment in time was an affirmation of what art therapists and expressive arts therapists have known. The profession was waiting for science to catch up to our instincts to create. That is the moment when I knew others needed to be cognizant of the role of creativity; and the art process and techniques provided in mental health treatment. My professional quest has focused on continuing that aha moment for others to experience and understand. The processes involved in creative activity can serve to improve the human experience and the human condition.

Why Art and Creativity?

One thoughtful consideration in this evolving discussion is why does art and creativity matter? I think, now more than ever, our safety, our self-expression, our continued life responses to trauma matters. As counselors, parents, teachers, and as emotional beings, what we experience and how we navigate those experiences matter. We do not experience the world alone, and our innate connectedness to those around us, and our impact on them holds great importance. Art is a thoughtful extension of the human experience, and the art we create through trauma healing serves as a long-lasting reminder that, through difficulty and triumph, we exist, and we can grow.

Art serves as nonverbal communication, a strong connection between the private worlds of the mind of the creator. Through art, we express, we heal, and we learn. So, when I am asked, “Why art?” I look to the paintings, the sculptures, back to the early cave drawings of humans who were around long before me and will remain long after I am gone, and I am reminded of the intense power these expressions hold; this communication approach driven by an innate need to share, remains part of the human experience.

Creativity largely impacts the outcome of art and our artistic expression. Creativity is the driving force of the shape art takes on. Inspiration may signal that initial spark, but creativity itself is what moves the artist’s hands to make. In this book, we define creativity as the ability to make something meaningful and thought-provoking out of simple materials. In essence, to add to the artist’s contemplative narrative.

Creative Mindfulness Approach

As we begin this exploration, consider what the mental health clinician might need for feelings of competence and confidence, in incorporating creativity into the clinical experience? Understand what traumatized individuals are seeking from treatment and what will be essential for clinical effectiveness? How will the reader engage in aspects of creative thinking that will support the individual in their creative process? We will begin our exploration of some basic concepts of humanity from a biological and neurophysiological process, and the impact of these concerns on the evolution of the human experience.

Traumatized Individual and Verbal Therapy

Let us begin this discussion with a moment that the mental health clinician may experience in their professional work. The traumatized individual enters the session and maintains a tearful and forlorn expression on her face. She immediately takes in a deep breath of oxygen. The silence of this moment is broken by the intake sound. Next, the clinician employs the counseling micro skill of silence, which is one of the basic foundational skills utilized in effective helping relationships. The silence at the moment allows the traumatized individual to “feel” those painful feelings that reside in the deeper regions of their brain’s amygdala. Thus, triggering a mirror neuron response in the clinician. The clinician begins to “feel” the struggles within their own physical body and experiences physical tightness in the chest region, as well stress and tension in the shoulders. The clinician provides a verbal, self-disclosure statement about the mirror neurons that are being activated at the moment. This is the perspective of the mental health process of the verbal mental health clinician.

The next step in the clinical experience might be to focus on the disconnect from the feeling of vulnerability to experiencing safety. Confronting this discrepancy through immediacy and shifting the experience to a strength-based moment is important. Creating a corrective emotional experience for the individual rests in the process of feeling vulnerable and shifting to the feeling of ‘safe’ in this instant. The clinician must utilize effective, therapeutic, and evidenced-based clinical skills to engage the individual which allows them to alter the feeling of scared into the feeling of empowerment.

Mental health clinicians are constantly seeking to provide the most effective and evidence-based approaches for the treatment of the trauma experience. Verbal psychotherapy has served and will continue to aid the traumatized individual in these moments. However, this exploration will further examine alternative, evidence-based treatment approaches and explore the effectiveness of these approaches in assisting traumatized individuals.

Many mental health clinicians are seeking effective alternative approaches but struggle with the process of integration into the clinical experience. This discussion serves to provide evidence of support for these creative and mindful approaches; and the companion book, Healing from Clinical Trauma Using Creative Mindfulness Techniques (Costello & Short, anticipated 2021) provides pragmatic and direct usage for incorporation of these processes. Let us begin the conversation by defining the terminology for the Creative Mindfulness technique, any subsequent language involved, and the exploration into the self-reflective and self-actualizing process for healing.

The Creative Mindfulness technique is the act of paying attention to purpose, to an individual’s present moment in time, and non-judgmentally letting creative experiences unfold. Through this mindful act, the creative experience of originality and meaning is determined by the creator (Costello, 2015). The goal of this interactive method is to increase psychological health and develop self-actualization skills for the traumatized individual. The use of intentional creative techniques in conjunction with mindfulness activity serves to mitigate the physiological responses of the body to trauma and rework the neurophysiological activity of the brain. This process of rewiring the neural pathways leads to adaptation and resiliency pattern identification. Strength-based or resilient approaches can support and enhance the neuronal alterations of the traumatized client’s brain. Let us revisit the traumatized individual experience and incorporate techniques of Creative Mindfulness into the same clinical situation.

Traumatized Individual and Creative Mindfulness

The traumatized client maintains a tearful and forlorn expression on her face and immediately takes in a deep breath. The silence of this moment is broken by the client’s subtle intake of oxygen. Next, the clinician employs the counseling micro skill of silence, which is one of the basic foundational skills utilized in effective helping relationships. The silence at the moment allows the client to feel those painful feelings that reside in the deeper regions of the brain’s amygdala. The mental health clinician through support and without judgment offers the client paper and a pencil to write a poem about their current emotion. The mental health clinician acknowledges the mirror neuron response as they themselves begin to feel the struggles within their own body and experience physical tightness in the chest and stress and tension in the shoulders.

The client is encouraged to move her arms and her body to prepare for the physical nature of these feelings as well as the internalized feeling of the emotion. Within several thoughtful moments, the individual begins moving the pencil around on the paper. The ideas become released from the creator. The individual feels the physical motion of their body as their hands and arms move, their eyes transverse the page, the sound of material on paper penetrates the eardrum, and the experience of emotion is transformed into something different. The movement of the body and the mental response of taking the painful concepts and allowing them to be readjusted outside of the client’s self.

And here, the process of sublimation begins. Sublimation is the psychodynamic defense mechanism that takes the unacceptable urges and alters the response to more socially appropriate utilization of the energy. At this moment, the client is altering their response and a new experience is starting to take shape. The client can verbalize the trauma memory or visually create the emotional expression of the physiological experience and subsequently rework the neuronal pathways within the brain. This process supports the neuroplasticity of the client’s brain. Through the process of reworking the experience, new or alternative neuronal pathways are created.

The mental health clinician verbally provides a visual descriptive statement about what the client has just created. Perhaps they offer a reflection of a feeling statement about the emotion connected to the creation. Here the clinician may even offer a self-disclosure statement about what the clinician is feeling and experiencing as they are responding to the creative expression of the client. This is the perspective of the mental health process utilizing creative and mindful approaches to the mental health session.

The next step in the clinical experience might be to focus on the disconnect from the feeling of vulnerability to a different feeling of safety by confronting this discrepancy through immediacy and shifting the experience to a strength-based moment. Creating a corrective emotional experience for the client rests in the process of feeling vulnerable and safe in this moment. Or connecting the emotional content to the physical response of the client’s body and empowering this moment in time. The clinician must utilize effective, therapeutic, and evidenced-based clinical skills to engage the client and allow them to transverse from feeling scared into feeling empowered. The creative mindful process activates multiple areas of the brain, and with mental health support, aids in reworking the neuronal pathways of the client’s brain and emotional experience of the trauma content.

The Importance of the Human Experience through Anthropology

From a behavioral standpoint, the human species has survived and thrived because of our innate danger stress response system called the central nervous system. In this manuscript, we seek to better understand the human biological response of survival and appreciate those experiences that are revealed in our ancient art history. We shall review the processes involved in making art for expression, communication, or uti...