ART THERAPY TECHNIQUES IN FAMILY COUNSELING

Abstract

The use of art therapy techniques in family counseling helps to establish family relationships, has a positive effect on the emotional state of spouses, and improves the ability to regulate emotions. Art therapy is useful in the work with families who have experienced traumatic events or who are working to overcome a crisis in their relationships. Creative work together can activate the mechanism of "joint coping" of spouses. Couples’ creative work together allows them to clarify situations, solve current problems, and build understanding and relationships through non-verbal communication and discussing their creative work products. Art therapy can help to build relationships between parents and children, for example, through the process of drawing together. The practice of art therapy in family counseling can actively involve techniques of using metaphorical associative images. Art therapy techniques perform important functions in family counseling: The function of establishing a therapy alliance (help form an atmosphere of safety and trust between the counselor and the client), the diagnostic function (provide the counselor with valuable material for making working hypotheses, suggest directions for further research; provide information about the relationships between family members, their statuses, roles, usual ways of communicating, hidden family dysfunctions); self-knowledge function ( make it easier for clients to understand, realize and accept their emotional reactions, displaced conflicts, problems, experiences); communicative function ( joint participation in creative activities helps to build trust and mutual acceptance, allows to freely express their feelings, declare their needs, receive and provide support); function of emotional self-regulation (socially acceptable response to negative emotions, their understanding and legalization of the formation of the ability to emotional self-regulation can occur); transformational function (the ability to change the view of the situation, develop new response strategies and new constructive solutions).