The "With That In Mind" Podcast · Red Bird Mental Health Services

Episode 54: With That in Mind | The Power of Expressive Arts Therapy: A Conversation with Megan Bell

·41 min·2 clips

Dr. Megan Bello-Zorzi describes how filmmaking helped her anxious son connect with classmates.

1. The "With That In Mind" Podcast episode "The Power of Expressive Arts Therapy" examines Megan Bell's approach to creative mental-health treatment. 2. Dr. Megan Bello-Zorzi hosts Megan Bell, a Redbird Mental Health clinician with a 2021 Bachelor of Fine Arts and a master's degree from Lesley University. 3. Bell frames expressive arts therapy as a way to use creative expression to explore feelings, experiences, insight, and personal meaning. 4. Bell distinguishes intermodal expressive arts therapy from single-modality art, music, or drama therapy by combining several art forms in one process. 5. Bell says creative work can incorporate bodily and cognitive processes while giving clients autonomy and agency to connect therapy with daily life. 6. Bell traces her interest in the field to parents who taught music, art, and theater and to a grandfather who helped co-found the National Association of Poetry Therapy. 7. Bell identifies children as especially receptive clients because they often have fewer social inhibitions about art-making and self-expression. 8. Bello-Zorzi describes how her son used filmmaking and scriptwriting instead of a conventional stage performance during a school talent show. 9. Bell explains that listening to music, creating a playlist, or making music can each function as expressive arts work at different levels of capacity. 10. Bell and Bello-Zorzi connect creative practice with community, discussing Jane Fonda's claim that art classes can help older adults build social connection. 11. Bell emphasizes that the therapeutic value lies in the process rather than whether the finished artwork looks skilled or polished. 12. Bell describes playfulness and curiosity as ways to let imagination generate possibilities before clients decide what their creative work means. 13. Bell introduces poesis, a Greek-derived term for creating forms that can bring deeply personal experiences into visible, audible, or tangible expression. 14. Bell says dance and improvisational movement are where she most often experiences personal release and connection with emotion. 15. Bell outlines the expressive therapies continuum's kinesthetic-sensory level as a place for movement, grounding, regulation, and body awareness. 16. Bell places emotional expression and symbolism in the perceptual-affective level and thought, planning, and meaning-making in the cognitive-symbolic level. 17. Bell says trauma-informed expressive work may use scribbling, clay, movement, journaling, music, or poetry according to the client's current state. 18. Bell stresses containment, boundaries, pacing, and therapist attunement because creative work involving trauma can become overwhelming quickly. 19. Parents, therapists, and adults seeking creative self-expression. 20. Listeners seeking medication advice or clinical assessment.

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