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Over the years, we have noticed that relatively few practitioners use creativity as part of their regular practice. This maybe because practitioners only encounter it during their training if they are on an art therapy course or have attended one of the more progressive humanistic courses. To our mind, this is a great shame and deprives the trainee of a beneficial technique that can make an enormous difference to the client’s journey. And one that can frequently shorten that journey.
Creatively really comes into its own when it assists the client to bypass their conscious mind, where all the current thinking and belief is enacted, and allows them to look at the underlying beliefs and values that are really driving their behaviour.
By writing this book, we hope to encourage you to use creativity and give you the confidence to use The ChrisLin Method with your clients. We aim to present it in a simple and straightforward way and provide enough information so you can:
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Understand how creativity works.
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Know when to offer creativity to your clients.
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Be confident in using The ChrisLin Method as an intervention.
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Learn how to work with your client’s creation.
Primarily, what we share in this book is based on empirical evidence from our own experiences and the results reported by other practitioners. But it is also highly influenced by our own personal approach to our work, founded in the humanistic, pluralistic and person-centred schools of thought.
We aim to give enough information so you understand The ChrisLin Method and how it is applied and can become confident with the approach.
The book explains and expands on the 5 Steps needed to work successfully with clients and the 9 Core Questions that you can use in any session to help a client uncover their unconscious beliefs and thought patterns, and move on from them. In addition the book provides case studies of real clients to demonstrate the application of the ChrisLin Method , the 9 Core Questions as well as supplementary questions specifically aimed at working with Anxiety, Anger and Boundaries.
I love how client-led the book is and the use of so many approaches but also how fluid it is and ‘roomy’
while still being a safe space for practitioners, full of encouragement for creativity and curiosity. So many
other coaching models can put clients and coaches in boxes and be very transactional – the ChrisLin Method
is generous, welcoming.
Anna Coach, Business Coaching Psychologist
Whether you previously thought of
yourself as creative or not, the ChrisLin Method will enable you to add this depth to your practice. They offer
easy-to-follow tools and structures to encourage practitioners to use creativity to access a client’s emotions
and unconscious mind in a safe and supportive way.
Amanda, Executive Coach
Creativity is a vital ingredient in our ability to change and grow – or to get unstuck.
You will find lots of innovative and practical ideas
in this well-presented book, and I recommend it to anyone involved in facilitating change.
Penny Tompkins, Psychotherapist, creator of Symbolic Modelling
This will be a book I refer back to again
and again. I have found this method to be a ‘go to’ when a client is stuck with something that seems to be a
mystery, as so often happens in client work. This book clearly encapsulates the process and leads the reader
through step by step.
Fiona, Integrative Counsellor
Metaphors are so widespread in everyday speech that there’s a tendency to dismiss them as unimportant cliches, but I have long believed in their therapeutic power to help illuminate a situation or feeling. The ChrisLin Method takes that power and uses it in a practical and compassionate way.
The Method works by inviting a client to depict their feelings about an issue using imagery that has meaning to them. A wide range of creative materials can be used for this purpose, and the work is underpinned by the practitioner’s guidance and integral trust in the process. This in turn helps the client feel both safe and empowered to explore their creation and allow it to bring what it knows to their awareness.
Christina and Lindsey guide the reader through this process with the same attention to detail and approachability they bring to their workshops. The chapters are clearly laid out, with a thorough explanation of each of the Method’s five steps and summaries to consolidate the learning. The questions at the end of each chapter invite practitioners to reflect on their role in the work, while the practical examples and accompanying illustrations help build confidence in working with metaphorical imagery in this way. A wealth of references and further sources are also included for those who wish to widen their understanding of working creatively.
As a person-centred counsellor, I have found the ChrisLin Method’s creative approach a fresh and effective way of working with clients that complements a well-established talking therapy. It is also insightful and reassuring in personal self-awareness and development work, and is therefore suitable both for practitioners and individuals interested in taking a proactive role in their own wellbeing.
It is good to finally have a therapeutic approach that takes metaphorical imagery beyond the often superficial use of everyday. I can see the ChrisLin Method being a valuable part of the practitioner’s toolkit for years to come.
Nina, Counsellor, UK.
Founders of Awakening Creativity, coach Lindsey Wheeler and humanistic counsellor Christina Bachini, demonstrate a simple and powerful new approach to incorporating creativity in coaching practice.
Unless it forms part of their wider experience, training or background, the use of creativity in therapeutic practice can feel daunting. This is likely because many only encounter it as part of their elected continuing professional development (CPD), or if they have experienced it on an art therapy course, or one of the more progressive humanistic courses. To our mind, this is a great shame and deprives practitioners of a beneficial tool that can make an enormous difference to our client's journey.
‘But your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart... Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.’ (5)
Carl Jung
Creativity as a therapeutic approach has a long history, particularly the work of Adrian Hill (1), (often considered the founder of art therapy in the UK), and the work of Margaret Naumburg (2) and Edith Kramer (2,3) in the USA in the 1940s. Even earlier, Freud had made connections between imagery and the unconscious mind, (2) and Carl Jung’s views on the importance and value of understanding one’s ‘inner city’ (4) through creativity is still foundational to understanding the human condition. More recently, the benefits and outcomes of creativity as a modality has been thoroughly researched and documented by the American Art Therapy Association (https://arttherapy.org), and British Association of Art Therapists (https://baat.org).
How does creativity help?
Helping clients explore their stories is what we all hope to do as professionals. We aim to support our clients as they journey to the heart of what is troubling them and uncover more helpful ways of ‘being’ today, in the present. It is here that working creatively really comes into its own. It assists the client to bypass the conscious mind, where all the current thinking is enacted, and allows them to look at the underlying beliefs and values that are really driving their behaviour.
However, when clients enter the room, they, and we as practitioners, are often most concerned with what their conscious mind is telling them. And much of our work is connected to helping clients gain clarity and some relief from the relentless churn of their conscious thoughts.
It is here, we believe, that working creatively with a client is particularly helpful because it provides a safe and fertile route to venture into their unconscious, to uncover their thinking patterns.
Creativity provides a key that unlocks stuck thinking and enables a new kind of conversation between practitioner and client to take place; a conversation that does not rely solely on the client’s ability to ‘find the right words’ and articulate in a literal or logical way what’s going on for them.
Working with complexity and confusion
When a client is invited to create a physical representation of their issue, they are able to detach from it, and leave behind their conscious knowledge of the situation that they already know so well. They are able to process the image in a way that offers new perspectives, and with their practitioner as guide, work with this new knowledge so that a change in the thinking system can occur.
For example, if a client says: ‘I’m feeling completely blocked, I really don’t know what to do’, asking them to create the metaphor ‘block’ as an image results in the mental freedom for a shift to occur. By simply creating an image of the ‘block’, the block itself is already transformed. Further investigation through skilled questioning will lead to an even greater understanding that will help reshape or dispel the block.
When we work creatively with people, movement takes place.
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‘This article first appeared in the January 2024 issue of Coaching Today, published by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
https://www.bacp.co.uk/bacp-journals/coaching-today/ ©BACP 2024.’