ABSTRACT
I already had been working at the hospital for 12 years when 13-year-old Ryan was referred to me for outpatient art therapy. So you think I should have known better. Still, when I met with his parents and they, in their desperation, told me they wanted me to help Ryan talk about his feelings, I nodded my head in sympathy, as if such a thing would be a likely outcome of my work with him. I mean, I really felt for these parents. They were terrified that he would again try to kill himself, and this time, they didn’t want to miss the signs. But when they said they would like him to learn to talk about his feelings, I should have told them flat out, “Don’t count on it.” I wouldn’t have said it that way. I would have said something more like this: “Ryan is a 13-year-old boy, and whereas some boys his age talk to adults about their feelings, it’s not really typical. I’ll try to help him learn to express his feelings rather than act them out in self-harmful ways, but his manner of expressing himself is much more likely to be through actions than words. That’s why his doctor referred him to me, so I could help him use art as his action language.” But I didn’t say that. Instead, the mother in me resonated with their fear-filled desire, and I found myself reassuring them that I would try to help Ryan talk about what he was thinking and feeling. I even fooled myself into believing this was a reasonable goal for our work together.
