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By Linda Pucci, Ph.D.
Feeling stuck? Try grabbing your kid's crayons and draw your way to a solution!
As a psychologist and life coach, I often work with people who are feeling stuck. Their usual right-brained, verbally-based approach to problem solving hasn't worked. They go back and forth between alternatives, and around and around in circles trying to figure out how to fix their problem.
That's when I often encourage them to turn to art to find the solution. Although consciously they are stuck, unconsciously they have the resources to solve their challenge. But because our unconscious mind is highly symbolic, to access it we have to speak that language.
Art—whether it is drawing, painting, doodling, sculpting, collages or fabric art—provides a way to unleash your unconscious mind and find solutions.
Sometimes I'll ask someone to depict their problem through artwork. I'll ask them to capture their problem's shape or color. Usually after some initial hesitation, and getting beyond concerns about "artistic ability," they are able to easily do it. Even without their realizing it, they are symbolically capturing all the things that problem represents to them.
I may then ask them to depict what things will be like when the problem is solved, and again, they capture their understanding of the solution through their artistic representation. We can then begin to look at the symbols and figure out what resources to use to shift it.
Sometimes I'll ask them to find a resource symbol and create it artistically. The symbol created is multi-leveled and always has intense personal meaning. Their artistic rendering often becomes a powerful ongoing symbol for them in their lives, and many times people will frame their drawing, or display this highly meaningful artwork as an ongoing reminder of this resource.
The symbolic nature of artwork means that it is a visual (and sometimes kinesthetic) image that captures all the nuances that often can't be captured in words. The artwork and the process of creating it allow them to design solutions, and to see their challenge differently. They can now begin to change their approach and get unstuck.
Linda Pucci, Ph.D. is a psychologist and life coach at Inner Resource Center, LLC in Maryville, TN. She has 30 years of experience helping people get unstuck and find solutions they had not thought possible using her solution focused approach. For more information and free resources for your personal growth go to http://www.InnerResourceCenter.com
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