What do you do when you feel blue? All people have their own ways to relieve stress. While some ways can calm negative feelings, other ways destroy physical and psychological conditions. The examples include excessive eating, watching television, or doing something dangerous. A psychological expert maintains that drawing something can relive stress. Kim Meoyng Hwa is a chief in Jin-Ju Art Treatment Center. Let’ meet her and learn how she helps to relieve other people’ stress.

Q1. Many people are unfamiliar with art therapist. Can you explain this job?
   The purpose of art psychotherapy is to help people recover from their psychological injury. Most people think that those who are in need of mental counseling are patients who have mental diseases. However, the target clients of art therapy can be ordinary people who have no psychological defects. Ordinary people who have healthy minds would boost their mental development with art psychological therapy by building an appropriate personality and mental stability. During the treatment, the art therapist uses a method of drawing to find out patients’recent mind condition and help the injury in their mind.

Q2. What made you to be an art therapist?
   Because I wanted to inform people about art psychotherapy, I decided to be an art therapist. Thirteen years ago, I was majoring in Art. While I was in university, I had a part time job in an art private educational institute. At that time, I wanted to learn how to communicate with students through drawing more efficiently. Therefore, I started to attend art psychotherapy courses, believing that it would help understand students’minds. Studying art psychotherapy, I found that I also had a hidden mental injury in me. Actually, I rarely expressed my mind to others and always got centered on others. This personality caused my mental injury silently. Luckily, I could help it with art psychotherapy and the trust to art psychotherapy became intense. After that, I would like to help other people who suffer from mental illness through art.

Q3. Before becoming an art therapist, what effort did you make?
   Frankly, steady efforts are needed before and after being an art therapist. Because, over time, the ways of art psychotherapy have had various trends and all people have their own personalities, it is necessary to be well-informed of recent psychological reports. For this, all therapists have to study consistently and diligently. However, sometimes, despite of using these ways, treating patients’minds is still complicated. Then, art therapist should counsel with a psychological supervisor. Considering these efforts, healing mental illness requires lots of people’ helping as well as an art therapist’.

Q4. Can you explain the process of treating your clients?
   Art psychological counseling is similar to general counseling. At first, I listen to the client’ problems. To find out the cause of mental illness, it is necessary to know client’ family history, relationship with his friends, and other relationships with acquaintances. After getting information about him, he and I discuss a therapy plan. The period of the therapy plan ranges from one month to one year. On each counseling, I give my clients tiny goals to improve their conditions. By achieving these goals, they can finally overcome their problems at the end of counseling.

Q5. When you examine the client’ drawings, which part of it do you pay attention especially?
   Most people misunderstand that an art therapist focuses only on the properties of drawing. The requirement to art therapist is not to decide everything merely based on clients’painting because drawing can show us incorrect information. Therefore, we also have to consider the client’ attitude to the counseling. For example, if I let him draw members of his family, I observe his facial expression, his movement grabbing the pencil, his level of concentration, and other trivial habits without his knowing. With comprehensive considerations, I can understand the client’ mental condition.

Q6. There are a wide range of media used in psychological therapy such as music, games, or play. What is the special hallmark of art psychological therapy?
   First, art stimulates the brain through various activities. Surprisingly, art consists of plentiful activities. For example, clients can throw their clay, crumple newspapers, daub the wall with colorful paints, as well as draw trees silently. Therefore, art uses all five senses, gross-motor skill, fine motor skill, and motor coordination movement between the hands and eyes. Consequently, this draws the results in the developments of perception ability.
   Second, the subjects of art psychological therapy would be various. Art can be proceeded without speaking. Thus, this feature is helpful to the people who are visually impaired or speech-impaired, infants who cannot express themselves by using language, and the others who have difficulty in speaking.

Q7. Most clients have their own heart-breaking experiences. While treating these problems, do you feel blue frequently?
   If the therapist feels blue because of clients’painful experiences, this situation is called “ountertransference feelings.”It means that client’ experience is understood from the view point of the therapists’own experience. The therapist who is undergoing “ountertransference feelings”o cannot continue counseling with the clients. This is because that the counselors lose their reasoning to think the situation logically as a third party. In short, therapists should be careful not to identify themselves with clients.

Q8. What is the most memorable counseling as an art therapist?
   I cannot forget counseling with a middle school student. He was causing trouble by assaulting his classmates frequently. However, contrary to his troubles, his drawings showed that he was fairly logical and had a powerful leadership skill. I tried to understand his innate personality. After listening to his story, I said, “ know that every day you do your best to satisfy your parents. But, your parents’expectations are too high to fulfill for you. I think this makes your behavior much more violent than ever.”As soon as he heard my saying, he shed tears and said, “hank you for understanding me.”After that, he didn’ cause any trouble. From him, again, I realized how the well-understanding counseling changes people effectively.

Q9. Can you advise people who have prejudice against mental illness?
   I know that receiving counseling owing to mental illness is considered negative by the public. As a specialist in psychology, I would like to say that mental illness has the same feature with physical illness in that they can be cured by regular counseling and medicine. Nowadays, a number of people take counseling not only for mental illness but also for their mental development. So, don’ be afraid of receiving psychological counseling.

Kim Min-su | By CP Cub Reporter