Self-Reflection and Creative Counselling Techniques Essay

Creative and therapeutic processes have a real and a meaningful connection. These two processes share some commonalities, and they work in tandem. In therapy, one can share his or her thoughts, ideas and feelings(Gladding, 2016).The process of self-reflection often has surprising results, and it enables us to uncover the feelings or thoughts we have forgotten about ourselves (Capuzzi et al., 2016). Creative processes in arts, poetry, songs and song open pars of our behaviour and traits. Through conducting self-reflection, one can learn about himself/herself. Through conducting the expression self-reflection assignment. I have learnt a lot about myself.

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Doing the assignment helped me appreciate the need for creativity in therapy matters, and I learned that I had great ability in the aspect of using art as a creative counselling technique. Also, I learnt that all creative processes are of profound importance. They enable one to reason and ponder on his/her ideas, change them or remain with the same ideas. In doing this assignment, I also appreciated that self-awareness is very vital in developing empathy about a wide range of counselling concepts. Through self-reflection, I was able to discover that I could change how I view things, especially when faced with challenges. Also, the need for integrity and core values in life was clear to me as I did the reflection assignment.

The difficult task in my reflection project was the choice of the creative technique for use, that is, to incorporate either music, poetry, a drawing, or a magazine clipping. All these creative techniques have their advantages and hence choosing the one has resonated well with my emotions at the time of making the poster was a challenge. Music, of course, has some of the greatest attachment to people's emotions. Sometimes listening to the lyrics of a song, we can learn a lot about ourselves and other people. Studies have shown that music has a special effect on our behaviours, our feelings and it can influence the way we do things in a rather special way. Therefore, it is one of the best techniques that can be incorporated in creative counselling. Aside from music, I also pondered on how I could include poetry in my creative expression self-reflection poster. Poetry can be used to show a hidden meaning or character (Capuzzi et al., 2016). In my poster, I didn't want to show my expressions directly. This could have been achieved well by using a poem as part of my creative counselling technique. However, poems had some disadvantages compared to music and other techniques. The other technique I consider was the use of a drawing or a painting in my project. Looking at the available technique, this probably convinced more since it resonated well with most of my emotions at the time of completing the project. Art is one of the best techniques in counselling and self-reflection. A painting depicting something has an effect of creating an illusion at the back of the mind. Studies have shown that using a drawing is the best way to express your ideas or thoughts even without having to describe them with using words.

The easiest part of my self-reflection project was the linking of my emotions with the creative technique I used. Once one has discovered what they are thinking about, they can easily relate these emotions with some music, a piece of drawing, song lyrics. Newspaper articles, among others. This is because the mind tends to read some significance in everything that seems to match the emotions at any given time. As I did the self-reflection poster board, I had deep thoughts on the challenges I was facing at that time. However, I had a feeling that I needed to remain focused despite the challenges. Therefore, it was easy to link this with some creative techniques, with the choice between the many options the only challenge encountered as discussed previously.

My overall reaction to completion of this assignment is a great feeling of satisfaction and self-realisation. Concerning self-reflection and creative counselling techniques, completing this assignment gave me confidence that I can be a creative counsellor to people.By reflecting on myself, managed to understand some of the creative techniques I can apply when dealing with a client or just a friend who needs some counselling. Reflection on myself also allowed me to understand the need of linking emotional to creative techniques, that is, either a song, a drawing, a newspaper excerpt or anything which is relevant. This now can be used in the ways of handling other people's emotional challenges.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the project was completed in a rather successful manner. Despite the challenges in choosing the creative technique, a drawing was finally my best consideration as it resonated very well with my emotions at the time of completing the assignment. In doing this assignment, I discovered that creative counselling could offer many therapeutic approaches, compared to conventional counselling where one has to focus on one technique. Using a drawing or a piece of art was the best method as it allowed me to present a variety of ideas together, without having to incorporate a lot of written expressions. Some techniques like poems require one to describe their relationship with other emotions as people may not understand the indirect meaning of some excerpts of song or poem. Overall, the project was a success in many dimensions.

References

Gladding, S. T. (2016). The creative arts in counseling. John Wiley & Sons.

Capuzzi, D., & Stauffer, M. D. (2016). Counselling and psychotherapy: Theories and interventions. John Wiley & Sons.