I learned a bit about different painting techniques this past week and how they could be used in an art therapy session. I needed to try one on myself and experience what a possible client might by doing this exercise.

I chose to do the Color Mood Pyramid technique. It is done by drawing a triangle and then using paint to fill it in, with negative moods towards the bottom and positive moods towards the top or vice versa. I chose the former version.

It did surprise me how much resistance I had to do this simple technique. I know looking back now over the past few days it was due to not wanting to actually give a physical representation to my moods. Pretty typical as a recovering food addict and alcoholic. Addicts are a large population that struggle with feeling feelings. It is all about excessively numbing oneself. Still, I did manage to finally complete this technique and it wasn’t as scary as I initially thought.

The other struggle I had was to not let myself start analyzing colors from a symbolized perspective like in color therapy so there had to at least be a logical detachment in order to do this.

I ended up painting the moods from bottom to top: depression/numbness(black), sadness (brown), anger/fear (red), loneliness (blue), serenity (light blue), joy(purple), laughter (green), happy (yellow), playful (lavender), and love (pink)

This not only helped me acknowledge my feelings but also gave greater insight to the struggles my future clients would struggle with as well.