Japanese characters naming meaningful work in English reads “iji no wan shigoto.”
This is what many of us want, to have work that shapes our daily lives with serious purpose. I have spent a very long time practicing Expressive therapy and psychotherapy, witnessing client’s transformations and embracing better lives. This work is meaningful and joyous.
I tell clients that I don’t ask them to do anything I haven’t done or tried to do myself. Otherwise it will not feel authentic in the room, especially in depth oriented work. In my own therapeutic process I have gone through the fire many times. I have come out the other side wiser and fuller, and therefore more able to hold clients when they show vulnerabilities in their process. I want to continue to expand iji no wan shigoto into new areas and reach clients in new ways, which includes blogging.
I am a Registered psychotherapist in Ontario, and an art therapist/Expressive therapist trained in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My moniker, “when words are not enough,” speaks to my abilities to see with non verbal sensitivities. This is born from having early access to art and dance, and partly from not having full access to language until age 2, when I was fitted with hearing aids. Art, dance, and drama are very much in person experiences, I thought.
But the pandemic taught me that I can effectively provide depth oriented therapy on line, via Zoom, video counseling. It whittles down to match, connection, support, and imagination.
When I saw client’s abilities to do depth therapy on line. My thinking about how to practice changed. The ability to connect with a client and access their creativity towards their own creativity still held true. Creativity is born in the mind, through imagination. Through listening carefully to body language, tones of words, ASL, and phrases, I could still provide a space for clients to drop into themselves.
Blogging is part of the practice.