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Creativity is an energy that is available to all of us. Making room for a song, poem or image in a session can help us out of therapeutic ruts, turbo-boost clinical work, and gently assist traumatised clients to unfreeze their unconscious. So, asks Sarah Van Gogh in the final part of her blog series on creativity and trauma – wouldn’t we be foolish not to invite its healing power into the consulting room, whatever our therapeutic modality?

Last week, Sarah Van Gogh introduced us to Shaz, a middle-aged woman of Pakistani heritage experiencing chronic pain in her shoulders. In the penultimate part of this series on working creatively with trauma, we see how facilitating an imaginary dialogue between the client and a mysterious figure led the past to lessen its grip.

Working imaginatively with what a client brings, rather than interpreting it, can help us to amplify unconscious material and explore feelings. This, argues Sarah Van Gogh, is where real change lies. In the next two parts of her series on creativity and trauma, she presents case extracts that reveal how imaginary dialogue helped a client with chronic back pain.

In our first Friday Focus series, Sarah Van Gogh is exploring the role of creativity in trauma work. Using the fictionalised case example of Belle and her recurring dream of a doomed astronaut, in her second blog she explores how working imaginatively with dreams can help clients to gradually integrate early trauma.

In the first of our Friday Focus series, Sarah Van Gogh will be exploring the role of creativity in trauma work. Over the next four weeks, she will show how helping traumatised clients to express themselves imaginatively increases their capacity to process un-integrated experiences. Today, she introduces this ‘third way’ of working with trauma, which neither risks destabilisation on the one hand, or superficial engagement on the other. On subsequent Fridays, she will use fictionalised case vignettes to illustrate how working with music, poetry or the client’s own imaginings can unfold in practice.