School Social Workers Using Art to Reduce Anxiety and Overwhelm in Children and Teenagers

As kids and teenagers return to school this fall, they may want to create a new way of expressing themselves emotionally and socially. This is a great moment to choose a value that can help them navigate this school year. It’s helpful to ask teenagers and young children, what would it look like and feel like to feel happy and joyful? What value would help them reach this feeling? It’s not usually the situation that brings the positive feeling, it’s the positive feeling itself that brings the desired outcome and this is often hard to describe with words.

Children and teenagers may be striving and working toward a goal that doesn’t actually end up bringing them joy. Often this is due to kids and teenagers choosing goals that please others instead of a true authentic journey toward something they want or need. There can be an energetic stamp to certain experiences that is connected to a false belief system. For example, others will like me if I get perfect grades or look in a certain way which is triggered by physical cues when hearing certain words and walking through certain experiences. A new blueprint may want to be drawn to create a goal that matches the compassionate care they want for themselves and others.

Here are two art activities that can be helpful. Have the student choose a value that they believe will match their heart and what it wants to bring joy and peace into this school year. I have free colorful value cards, in the downloadable section, that you can use in these two art activities. These activities reduce perfectionism and anxiety and instead stand in the sacred ground of their core values which bring into view their authentic self. You can ask a student to choose a value such as friendship or love and place it on a piece of paper and then ask them to draw pictures and write words to reflect how they will feel and act when this value is present and felt.

Another activity with value cards, is called the Self Universe which I learned about in a class I took through NW Creative Expressive Arts Institute in Seattle. You again place a value in the middle of a circle and then have four squares equal distant from the value, titled spirit, body, heart and mind. Ask the student to write words or pictures that link the value such as vulnerability or bravery to these four squares. On the outside of the circle, you can have the student write words or pictures that may interfere or be a trigger that may set them back to an old blueprint of thinking that might not be helpful. For example, not speaking their truth or avoid boundary setting in an effort to be liked. These activities foster awareness which is a great contributor to change and healing I will be starting individual and group supervision this fall focused supporting students in taking care of their emotional health.