How to do art therapy with Elisha-Rio Apilado
My interview guest this week is Elisha-Rio P. Apilado, MA, ATR-P. Elisha is an artist, dancer, and art therapist from Chicago, Illinois.
She worked in advertising and art direction for 10 years before switching careers to art therapy. Recently graduated from Adler University, Elisha is currently a therapist fellow at Empower Family Therapy.
She is on a mission to advocate the importance of expressive arts therapy and how it can be utilized to break the stigma surrounding mental health, specifically within the Filipino/a/x community. Her focus is on using the arts to open up communication about colorism and the long-term effects of colonialism.
When she’s not advocating for the importance of a multiculturally-informed approach to counseling, she is busily training at the dance studio or traveling to complete an art bucket list: see each city’s art museum at least once.
I spoke to Elisha about how she got into art therapy, what a typical art therapy session looks like, and what advice she has for therapists who are interested in art therapy. Enjoy!
Where does your interest in art therapy come from?
While working as an art director, I also volunteered as an art teacher at homeless shelters in Chicago. I committed to an hour a week to make art with individuals whose lives were completely turned upside down.
Despite their circumstances, their joyful presence while painting and crafting alongside each other really sparked my interest in how art can be turned into communal healing. I didn’t even know the term “art therapy” existed back in my undergraduate days, but I was motivated to do more research in this field.
I have always created community art projects utilizing my network of fellow artists to give back to the community, such as making cards for cancer patients or holiday cards to send to troops overseas. I guess my interest in the arts as a healing tool has always been there. It took me a bit to be formally introduced to it and finally commit to switching from commercializing art to using it to build connections within ourselves and our relationship to the world.
How do you use the expressive arts in your practice?
It varies with each client! I use the expressive arts in several ways:
Understanding our identity
Exploring the here and now and where we want to be
Mindfulness-based to ground ourselves in the present moment
For little kiddos specifically: a way for me to explore their world views and guide their capabilities of emotional identification/regulation
By using art-making during therapy, the client can use a different form of expression to communicate their current needs to me. I also try to incorporate music and dance/movement within art-making.
I have found that integrating these different expressive arts into the session helps the client feel more at ease and comfortable experimenting with a way of communication that may be foreign or intimidating to them.
What does a typical session look like?
I always have different art supplies, ranging from controlled supplies (like colored pencils) to more fluid supplies (like paints), available on the table to support the client’s autonomy. Their choice of medium also gives me insight into how they’re feeling at the start of the session.
The more they incorporate different mediums into their art-making throughout the session, the more intel I get on their comfortability level and how playful they are becoming.
After presenting a brief description of the directive the client is about to do, I leave it to them and often play meditative, relaxing music to set the tone. Depending on the client, I may join in with them to make my piece of work so that they don’t feel alone. I don’t want them to think this is an art class, and I’m a teacher grading them!
We usually process the work with non-judgmental, open-ended questions at the end of art-making. Art therapy is all about the process and never about the result. It’s interesting to hear how the client views what they’re created.
The narrative they share with me about the content of their work and even their own reflections/thoughts/emotions while creating is the secret sauce to art therapy. Having this discussion with the client reflecting on their artwork is also an excellent way for the client to discover things they may not have noticed and connect to their presenting issues.
Who is your ideal client?
I love clients who are up for experimenting and trying something new. Especially for those who may not have the right words to express themselves fully, this is where art therapy slides right in. I've found these types of clients have usually been toddlers, grade-school age, and young teenager clients.
Toddlers and grade school-age kiddos constantly use their hands to make something, and I find our conversations much more engaging. If anything, they continue to remind me how important imagination is. My teen clients have unique insight about the world and often are not supported to share it because they’re “just kids.”
I’ve learned so much from both age groups so far, and they all have motivated me in creating more effective art directives specifically for their population.
Any final thoughts for therapists interested in art therapy?
This is a field where you can throw perfectionism out the window! Usually, therapists interested in pursuing art therapy are artists themselves or have dabbled in some arts/crafts. This is your time to understand who you are as an artist and embrace the process versus the result of what you’re creating.
Once you make those connections for yourself, this is your superpower in guiding your clients to bridge that gap between what they’ve created to what they want to communicate but may not be able to express.
Thank you to Elisha for sharing with us. Follow her on Instagram and on Twitter. To learn more about the AAPI community and art therapy, listen to her interview on the Asian American History 101 Podcast.