Power-From-Within: Somatic Art Therapy With an LGBTQIA+ Teenager

Abstract

The integration of somatic approaches in art therapy can counter the trauma of microaggressions. By adopting a power-from-within stance, art therapists can facilitate sessions for clients to affirm their LGBTQIA+ identities while resisting the impact of discrimination. This article, co-written by an art therapist and client, provides lived experience examples of somatic art therapy: Somatic Experiencing® integrated with body tracing, and sensorimotor art therapy (the Clay Field^®). The authors concur that somatically integrated art therapy has helped replace automized behavioral patterns based on fear with behavioral choices that emerged from a place of safety. Implications for therapeutic alliance and power dynamics within art therapy sessions are explored as tenets of body-based self-reflection.

Keywords:

• Cultural humility
• LGBTQIA+
• sensorimotor art therapy
• somatic art therapy
• therapeutic alliance

Notes

1 Haines (2019) describes a similar quality using the term power-with, emphasizing its somatic nature and its potential to heal trauma caused by social injustice.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rivkah (Rebecca) Hetherington

Rivkah (Rebecca) Hetherington is an art therapist in private practice, Bologna, Italy. Luna is an art therapy client in Italy.

Luna

Rivkah (Rebecca) Hetherington is an art therapist in private practice, Bologna, Italy. Luna is an art therapy client in Italy.