Trauma-Informed Creative Art Therapy

Because trauma is difficult to describe and heal with words alone, the Creative Art Therapies are uniquely situated to provide clinicians with verbal and especially non-verbal tools to help clients recover from traumatic experiences while also providing the clinician with creative clinical methods for working with clients suffering from PTSD.

This three-hour training will present the mental health professional an overview of brain-based research on trauma and how the arts are uniquely situated to mitigate trauma at its source (where it is stored in the brain). Interrelated methods for treating clients who are recovering from trauma and PTSD will be presented that foster recovery, safely, without re-traumatization.

“Art is an essential part of the mytho-poetic matrix that restores and makes healing the wounds of trauma possible”.
Kalsched, 2013

This 3 CE online event is offered by the LCAT Advocacy Coalition as a fundraiser for ongoing legislative advocacy in New York State to increase access to the creative arts therapists and to protect the rights of current clients who depend on insurance to access these therapies.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify three or more art therapy interventions that can address emotional, cognitive, and relational needs of clients who have experienced trauma or are in a PTSD state.
• Learn three or more trauma-sensitive art therapy directives, to debrief and re-frame and that can be immediately implemented into therapy practice to help children, families, couples, and adults regulate their emotions and behaviors
• Learn two ways to introduce the creative arts into clinical practice for RESILIENCE-BUILDING treatment, including with resistant and challenging children and families.

Presenter: Lucy Barbera, PhD, LCAT

Lucy is a New York State Licensed Creative Arts Therapist, Art Teacher, and School District Administrator, whose work spans the medical, psychiatric, and educational settings. For 23 years, Dr. Barbera served on the faculty of The Humanistic Multicultural Education Graduate Program, at the State University of New York (SUNY), at New Paltz, where she developed and taught courses in Expressive Arts in Education, In the Human Services, and in Social Justice Leadership. Currently, Dr. Barbera is facilitating theTrauma-Informed Creative Arts Therapy Certificate Programs for Mental Health Professionals & Educators, a post-graduate program offered by Antioch University.  Dr. Barbera lectures widely and maintains a private practice in Kingston, New York, working with children and adults with life-threatening medical conditions/death and dying, teens who self-harm, or are challenged with disordered eating, addiction, and/or complex trauma. Dr. Barbera’s doctoral dissertation on the Expressive Arts and Social Justice was granted The Excellence in Scholarship Award in 2009, by the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association (ETD) and her book, Expressive Arts in Teacher Education: Cultivating Social Justice Leadership, was published in 2011. In April 2024, her most recent chapter contribution: The Avatar: Masks of Hope and Healing, was published in The Expressive Use of Masks Across Cultures and Healing Arts, (Ridley, S., Ed.: Routledge).

arttherapycertificate.com

CEs are available for NYS LCSW, LMSW, LMFT, LCAT, LMHC, and Licensed Psychologists. New York Creative Arts Therapists, PLLC, SW CPE is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board as a provider for licensed social workers #0275, licensed creative arts therapists #CAT-0026, licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0065. LMFT and Licensed Psychologists.