Loving Yourself on Valentine's Day

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day! I spent mine in Tucson today making some awesome art with the Bridges patients.

Tim attributed his color choice to growing up in the 60's 

This is Tim! He seemed to thoroughly enjoy our Valentine activity today. The overall theme of the day was "loving yourself." When I arrived at Bridges at 9am, Ms. Endreson gave me a task: to create an acrostic poem with my name. I realized that starting the day off with a fun craft was incredibly refreshing! So here's what I came up with:

Unlike yesterday, we decided to provide a bit more structure to the project. My piece was meant to serve as an example. But, as you can see, Tim decided to wander from the original plan. Overall though, it seemed like providing a prompt increased the motivation level of some of the patients. They were a bit more responsive today. When we went around the room and picked positive words to describe ourselves, they picked words such as "kind," "jovial," and "determined." 

About halfway through the session, I realized that one of the patients was a little detached from the group. Anastacio sat at the end of the activities table with a blank stare on his face. It probably didn't help that he only spoke Spanish. But even when I tried to encourage him by placing some blank paper and colored pencils in front of him, he simply stared more; he was tired and depressed. So as Ms. Endreson worked with another patient, I began a little project of my own. 

It was even Anastacio's birthday today!

Ms. Endreson had given me a movie several weeks ago to watch before we started the project. It's called Art Therapy Has Many Faces. I recalled a scene in the movie where a therapist engaged a patient by drawing their portrait and giving it to them. I figured I would try the same method with Anastacio (he was a very good model...he might have been asleep, but it worked for me!) When he woke up a little bit, I presented him with his picture and his face lit up right away. Ms. Endreson explained to me later that it was a rather effective art therapy intervention. I hope it will encourage him to make his own art in future sessions.

Overall, today was a great success. I learned the importance of providing a bit of structure for the patients and of recognizing positive thoughts. 

Before I left today, Ms. Endreson let me know that I would likely encounter a whole new set of patients next week. I can't wait to see what kind of projects we will come up with! 

Until next time, 

Tia