Increasing Creativity and Hope in Your Therapy
Sometimes even the most effective therapists get worn out; when this happens, our creative spirit may disappear from the therapy office. In this post I will present some research-based information about being more creative in our work, and add additional information about using mindfulness to enhance your clients’ hope. This information will also expand your own hope. We all know that hope is one of the most important element in therapy and counseling. Here are a few suggestion from Scientific American for enhancing our creative energies.
- Stop just talking! It is important to utilize all pathways of consciousness, not just verbal, cognitive, and prefrontal activation.
- Use lots of sensory interventions. Plan and implement interventions using all the human senses.
- Use lots of symbols in therapy, and have your client come up with their own symbols to represent what they are experiencing in life. Symbols for solutions are very important.
- Use lots of metaphors in your talking cures. Invite your client to come up with their own metaphors.
- Utilize your own clinical knowledge, and go deeply into your client’s beliefs, aspirations, and behavioral activations in those aspirations.
- Remain open to the possibilities within creativity – your own and your client’s.
- Do not be critical of “off-the-wall” ideas your client may
have. Criticism stifles creativity and open conversation. How might you use their suggestions in creative ways? - Do your best to remain positive in the work. This requires good self-care and clinical supervision.
- Use left-hemisphere powers to plan and evaluate interventions and new behaviors; use right hemisphere powers to activate more creative ways of doing the business of change.
- Use lots of colors to help your client develop visual images and pictures of desired changes. Add symbols and metaphors within the projective drawing interventions. No “stick-figures!”
- When you are stuck, use free association to see what comes into consciousness about moving on.
Others with psychological background suggest that there are at least seven ways to enhance creativity. These ways include conscious and unconscious aspects of creative process and emotions. Use your personal values and reflective introspection to find sources of creativity in love, in nature, using the muse, in your own suffering, via regular meditative practice, in sacredness, and in art.
You may also find it helpful to use writing and poetry. Sometimes it helps by using the creativity of others. In the final analysis we all know we cannot simply turn-on creativity just because we wish to do so; it comes when we are ready to use it well. Follow the suggested areas above to stimulate your readiness to be more creative int your therapy and in your life.
Hopefully this information will help you to experiment with being more creative in your counseling and therapy. Now let’s take a look at ideas for enhancing and expanding hope. Using mindfulness and presence while practicing the Zen Buddhist paramitas or perfections may open up pathways to patience and caring. In our current disruptive world it is easy to get lost in the “I-Smart” phone next contact (an addiction); it is easy to allow others to influence our expectations and moods – often for the worse. The I/Me/Mine attitude of our narcissistic culture may be modified by the self-affirming realties of “The Perfections” (to give and to receive with grace, to use skillful actions, to be patient, to augment effort, to meditate, and “see” clearly). Engaging in these behaviors 
may help us return to the true self and an authentic life. The wisdom of these ancient teachings may open up the light in our dark nights of the soul. Living the foundations of The Perfections may liberate our deep hope for the better. Correctly taking and giving with patience and effort can enter our regular meditation practice. We may see more clearly what is important, as well as what path to take in any given challenge. Living our life with The Perfections in mind, body, and behavior expands hope for ourselves and for others. How might you creatively introduce The Perfections to your client (only with permission – they are Buddhist)?
For more information refer to DiChristina, M. (Ed.). (2008). Brainstorming: Using Science to Spark Maximum Creativity. New York: MacMillan Audio Books. See also Rizzetto, D. (2019). Deep Hope: Zen Guidance for Staying Steadfast When the World Seems Hopeless. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications. Quibell, D. A., Selig, J. L., and Slatery, D. P. (2019). Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications.
Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC
From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton Sangha
Author of Mindful Happiness
cognitions and emotions from the past, we need to move to the present moment and be there in calmness and safety. Of course other interventions are required when psychosis, intoxication, or extreme emotional dysregulation occur; meditation is not the recommended response in these conditions. One of the best ways to introduce your clients to meditation is to simply allow a gentle focus on the breath, just as it is. Relaxation-focused manipulation of the deep breath, especially for client with untreated trauma and polyvagal complications, may lead to the opposite effect – stimulating anxiety. Once your client can focus gently on her/his breath and benefit from brief exposures, he/she may be ready for brief meditations.
hold your head in a relaxed and level position. Now loosen your jaw and notice. Practice releasing any tension that you may be carrying in your throat. Let it go very gently, and open up your throat. Now bring attention to the area of your heart center, and imagine a warm, glowing, gentle inner light there. Notice the feeling. Allow it to nurture you. To end simply be with your natural breath; after a few breaths, allow it to bring you to full attention. This meditation is over.
positive thoughts and emotions. When we get stuck in negative cycles of thinking, feeling and doing our right brain and limbic area dominate. A very old mindfulness belief is that you are not your thoughts, your emotions, or your behaviors; these parts of you are simply associated with your life experiences. When a client learns to defuse a though it means they have changed its linguistic structure and removed it from being cemented into their CABs, or cognition-affect-behavior cycles. In all good therapies, especially Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and various mindfulness therapies (MBCR, DBT, MBCT, MBRP, ACT), helpers often work on truth-analysis of unhelpful, repetitive, negative thoughts patterns – especially those embedded into CABs cycles of ineffective experiences. Self-medication, isolation, and avoidance are commonly associated with these realities. Sometimes this work includes meta-cognitive analysis regarding your thoughts about your thoughts or the patterns of your thoughts. The clear logic is that the words we often tell ourselves in times of stress or fear are NOT often true. Of course, if indeed you are seriously endangered best to allow your limbic brain area to save your life. The list below will note various approaches used to defuse thoughts from our experience of being, our CABs cycles.
example: “I am so worthless” helps solidify your brain plasticity about personal meanings and images. Try this: “Sometimes I feel worthless” or “When really bad things happen, I can feel worthless” or “My unpleasant feeling can relate to feeling less worthwhile.”
therapeutic relationship. In some cases, the clinical alliance and therapeutic relationship may be qualitatively superior than in other therapies. However, in cases of severe co-occurring disorders (those that tend to make mental health-behavioral health treatment the most costly of all), the alliance is essential for progress but the relationship alone does NOT cure. It is interesting that systems paying for professional therapy services still fund this generic form of therapy. Back to CBT.
irrational; it is outdated and insulting to clients. How would you feel if a person told you “your thoughts are irrational?” Clients are helped to recognize advantages and disadvantages of their self-defeating thought patterns (more meta-cognition than single thoughts) by examination of consequences for having such thoughts – often depression, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, and loss of motivation. Reattribution of responsibility for outcomes is also important, as is the reframing process often used to establish reattributions. A more balanced locus of control may be a goal. Thought records are used. However, to do a better job using both cognitive and behavioral aspects, I suggest using an Experience Record that includes events, thoughts, emotions, sensations, behaviors (especially self-medication), consequences of behaviors and an evaluation of the helpfulness of the consequences. Using the cost-benefits analysis grid may also be helpful. This approach includes a quadrant regarding actual good consequences about keeping the thoughts/behaviors; actual negative consequences about maintaining the thoughts and behaviors; expected good consequences about changing the thoughts and behaviors; and, expected barriers/roadblocks about making such changes. CBT can include a harm reduction process in slowly improving thoughts and behaviors, especially in related substance misuse or self-harm aspects of problem solving. I suggest the most important parts of CBT are a solid therapeutic relationship, use of both cognitive and behavioral skills for modifying unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, and built-in behavioral reinforcement for any changes made by the client. Now we go into the behavioral components of CBT.
activity schedule to help clients engage more fully with helpful behaviors that may slowly come to replace older unhelpful (rewarding) behaviors. Clients learn how to recognize and monitor both external conditions and internal states of being in response to the external conditions. Of course, there are also internal conditions that may be monitored as well: depression, anxiety, fear, dread, sensation-emotion links, etc. Relaxation and mindfulness training (MBSR or ACT may be best) are used to help client cope better with
requires an exceptional therapeutic alliance (psychodynamic therapy), modifications in automatic negative thoughts (cognitive therapy), changes in unhelpful behaviors, like self-medication of pain (behavior therapy, and combinations like very well executed cognitive-behavioral therapy), commonly long-term healing outcomes have been somewhat disappointing. Perhaps an experienced and skilled therapist able to develop a high quality psychodynamic clinical alliance as well as highly effective cognitive-behavioral interventions may achieve admirable outcomes; however, that specific combination of skills is not common. I am suggesting that a high quality helping alliance and successful interventions in thinking and behavior problems may be helpful for people suffering from serious trauma. However, most of these approaches (other than informed and skilled DBT) miss the mark when it comes to integrated positive impact on the mind-body system. Even in DBT (and CBT), it is common for it to be used as a form of cognitive therapy – leaving the important behavioral and body-based areas out all together. To take a new look at the traumatized mind-body, witness current successes in trauma-informed yoga and meditation for PTSD. Recent meta-analytical reviews have noted that meditation (and yoga to a lesser degree) do improve depression, anxiety, physical pain (emotional pain?), and emotion regulation. Therefore, such body-based approaches improve three (depression, anxiety, self-medication) of the common clinical conditions associated with serious trauma.
mindfulness-based interventions in trauma, the best therapists are also practitioners in these practices. Limbic and prefrontal interventions, NOT psychodynamic and cognitive interventions, may be highly helpful in effective trauma-informed psychotherapy.