ABSTRACT
But is it safe? Speaking about feelings and relationship issues through drawings is ‘indirect expression’. This indirectness offers safety. The pictures in the exercises and those drawn by the participant are set apart from the self, seen from a standing-back position. In this way, they act as containers for feelings which could otherwise be experienced as overwhelming, chaotic or unthinkable. Through the act of drawing or writing, the ‘forming feeling’ process is a way of creating external order out of inner chaos. Once the feelings are organised into an image on a piece of paper, they can be thought about in a clear, nonthreatening way. This can bring real relief from having externalised what has previously been experienced only as raw, disturbing unprocessed states. The sequence is as follows: overwhelming feeling, through image, to thoughtabout feeling.
