Healing boundaries: a teenager's experience of art therapy integrated with Somatic Experiencing

ABSTRACT

Background

Sensorimotor Art Therapy acknowledges the importance of Somatic Experiencing (SE) in its development as a physiological technique to treat trauma. Both disciplines seek to regulate the nervous system, favouring stress management and affect regulation. This article promotes the integration of SE within psychodynamically-oriented art therapy pathways, so that psychological and physiological techniques can compliment each other.

Context

This paper is based on an interview with 13-year-old Federico Gentile (pseudonym). He has had weekly individual art therapy sessions for two years. Art therapy began 15 months after he began living with his adoptive parents.

Approach

Trauma can be defined as the rupture of a boundary on many different levels (physiological, psychological, social). A common thread throughout the sessions was the testing and repairing of boundaries. The therapist herself found it necessary to break two boundaries: giving the user a gift and integrating SE techniques from outside our field.

Outcomes

The young boy (as lived-experience-author) explains how he sees and defines himself describing which interventions helped him be ‘more controlled now’ and see his life ‘in colour, instead of just grey’.

Conclusions

Treating trauma requires a complex approach, focused in the here and now, ignoring the mind’s theory of ‘should’ and responding to the body’s ‘felt sense’.

Implications for Research

SE has enhanced my ability to work physiologically, integrating bodily sensations with affect and imagery. Further research could offer guidelines towards an integrative approach that could be useful to other psychodynamically trained art therapists working with attachment trauma.

Plain-language summary

Trauma has physical as well as psychological consequences and therefore needs healing in both these aspects. A form of art therapy known as ‘sensorimotor’ that focuses on bodily sensations and muscular (motor) responses has been developed for this purpose (pioneered by Cornelia Elbrecht), based on knowledge gained from Somatic Experiencing (pioneered by Peter Levine). I am trained in Sensorimotor Art Therapy and have found that further training in Somatic Experiencing is helping me introduce this outlook into my art therapy practice, allowing me to shift my focus when necessary from the art materials to the body, exploring the body’s response as it interacts with the materials. I believe this could be useful to other art therapists who wish to broaden their horizons in this direction.

I interviewed 13-year-old Federico Gentile (pseudonym) in order to present his experience of art therapy from his perspective. At the time of interview, Federico had done art therapy with me for 2 years. We began sessions 15 months after he began living with his adoptive parents.

I find it helpful to think of trauma as an experience that goes beyond our limits in many different ways: it challenges our physical, mental and social limits of toleration. As such it is no surprise that our therapy was centred around testing limits. As the therapist, I overstepped two limits: giving the boy a gift and integrating Somatic Experiencing techniques from outside our field. Federico talks about specific things in art therapy that helped him be ‘more controlled now’ and see his life ‘in colour, instead of just grey’. There is no one answer to healing trauma and sometimes, when we are beyond our limits and don’t ‘know’ what’s right, we can only respond by ‘feeling’ what’s right. Somatic Experiencing helps us contact and trust that ‘feeling’.

KEYWORDS:

• Trauma
• art therapy
• children
• co-production
• somatic experience
• sensorimotor

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisors whose feedback and support led to my desire to write this paper: Mimma Della Cagnoletta and France Fleury (Psychodynamic Art Therapy); Cornelia Elbrecht (Sensorimotor Art Therapy); Vijaya Cinzia Conti (Somatic Experiencing).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rivkah (Rebecca) Hetherington

Rivkah (Rebecca) Hetherington is an HCPC (UK) registered art psychotherapist who trained at Art Therapy Italiana (Italy). Her particular interest in treating trauma has led her to specialise in the Clay Field and Guided Drawing at the Institute for Sensorimotor Art Therapy (Australia) and to train in Somatic Experiencing. She is an artist with a BA and MA in Fine Art in the UK where she grew up, and she has recently graduated in Psychology (Italy). Her home is Bologna where she has lived for 20 years and where she has her private practice, working with children, teenagers and adults, expanding online since the outbreak of COVID-19. Her interest in social justice has led her to create projects for Art Therapy Groups with Bologna women’s prison and for vulnerable teenagers in collaboration with child refugee centres, schools, cooperatives and social services. She offers pro-bono services for Bologna’s Women’s Shelter. In collaboration with Bologna’s LGBTQI+ centre, she set up an Art Therapy Group dedicated to LGBTQI+ service users and has published her research in this field (The Arts in Psychotherapy and IJAT). She firmly believes in Amber Gray’s ‘reciprocal alliance’ approach and is passionate about making art therapy available to everyone.

Federico Gentile

Federico Gentile is the pseudonym of the young boy who has generously contributed to this paper. He’s a pre-adolescent who found art therapy unexpectedly useful and is pleased and proud to share his experiences. But Federico is not a coincidental name. He is also an important alter ego, a famous footballer and millionaire who makes regular appearances in immaginative games during art therapy sessions, sometimes as a teenage son, sometimes as a father of two boys, sometimes as an art collector, always as a gifted footballer and someone who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Federico is here to demonstrate how being a rebel spirit can be endearing and lovable. He shares many of the young boy’s life experiences as well as representing the fulfillment of his hopes and aspirations. A big thank you to Federico!