Mena graduated from the
Expressive Arts Therapy program in 2000.

What brought you to the EXA program at CIIS?

When I was in high school I wanted to be a psychologist. Later on, I looked into the possibility of applying to a music therapy or art therapy program. It was obvious that both of those programs would have required more extensive training in those areas, prior to entering those programs. A mastery of music and/or art would have been necessary, and I have never had mastery of any one art form. I had dabbled in various creative areas; ceramic art being my strongest. I also write poetry, have written some songs, play a little guitar, and worked with collage and pen and ink drawing. Shortly after college, I began a business and didn't think about pursuing that career in psychology for about 14 years. I mean, I thought about it occasionally, but ignored the voice inside that wanted to do that. I then received a CIIS flyer about the Expressive Arts Program and a light went off. Oh my god, this is it!! The program's philosophy and curriculum was exactly what I was looking for. I did not need to be a master in any one area, and I loved the idea of combining several arts modalities, since that's what I did creatively in my own life.

Did people in your group have different art backgrounds?

Oh, yes! There were other people in the class who certainly had more experience than I did in various art forms, including several professional musicians, artists and actors. But that was never a problem; the group was very supportive of each other. I believe my classmates felt I also had much to offer as well.

How did the program affect you personally?

Perhaps the better question would be how did the program not affect me personally? It affected every area of my life...psychological, spiritual, physical, emotional and of course, intellectually and creatively. I grew a tremendous amount during the program; my self-confidence increased, my sense of self transformed and ultimately, I felt as if I had finally grown more into myself. Of course originally, I hadn't thought that I was going to school to heal my own wounds, but when I look back, that is one of the gifts that I received.

Is there anything particularly memorable from the program?

Our final arts presentation was powerful and emotional. It demonstrated the unity of our class. It demonstrated what we learned, how we had come to create together and the love we felt for each other, as well as our faculty. The cohort structure was what made the program a richer program than I believe it would have been otherwise. It was a very supportive environment. We socialized together, organized study groups, and there was always somebody to talk about an assignment. I still keep in touch with people and I made life time friends.

How are you applying this work in your professional life?

Right now I am four months into a new job as a therapist ("Mental Health Worker") for the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics, Healthcare for the Homeless Program. I see patients individually, I run a support group and I do outreach to the homeless population. I am currently using the arts with both individuals and in my group and am exploring the possibility of utilizing the arts in my outreach work at a soup kitchen.

How have you found the receptivity of people for using the arts?

People are very receptive; everyone loves the idea of using the arts. When I first started this job and I told people that my work as a therapist included using the arts, people said, "Oh, you have to tell me when you start that group, I definitely have people to refer to you." People's eyes light up. I am very excited about being able to use the arts in my work.

In my practicum, I did an expressive arts therapy group once a week for approximately one year. That group was the highlight of my practicum. I was working with people who were in recovery from alcohol and other drugs. Most of them had been drug free for at least a year. One of the things that we did was a spirit house. I got old cigar boxes, wine boxes and other boxes. First I had the group members write and asked them questions like what spirit meant to them, what life meant to them, what death meant to them, how they wanted to live in the world and how their spirituality been part of their recovery. Then, I asked them to collect and gather objects that they wanted to include in or on their spirit house. Then we worked on incorporating the gathered objects into the boxes. Each part of the process took it's own time...it was an evolution, an unfolding process that took a life of its own where people discovered things about themselves that they had not realized before. They were surprised and delighted not only with the process but also the final product. Although expressive arts therapy is not about the product, but the process, in this case, the product was equally important to the process...the product was the process. This was an incredibly rich experience to be part of and also to witness. No one walked away from that experience unchanged.

In your opinion what makes an artistic process so powerful when working with people?

I can tell you about an artistic process that I went through that might be helpful in answering this question. I was in therapy and my therapist assignment to me was to do an art piece about who I was. I did a collage-assemblage and in the center of this collage I put a miniature wooden house. I brought it to therapy and I hated the way the house looked sticking out of the center. The collage was mostly flat but there were a few pieces in it that were 3-dimensional and the wooden house was one of them. So I am talking to my therapist, telling her "I hate how this house looks, sticking up in the middle of the collage, I wish I could just pull it off, cut in half and put it back on." And then I stopped dead in my tracks. At that time I had been trying to settle my divorce with my ex-husband and we had a house that we were trying to negotiate a settlement on. The process was dragging on and I was losing hope that it would ever be settled. Consciously, I hadn't realized this when I stuck this house directly in the center of this collage. But there it was...this house was in fact, literally and metaphorically, in the middle of my whole life, keeping me from truly moving forward!

There is an addendum to this story which is quite amazing. I hung this collage on the wall in my room, and on the very day that the divorce was settled, the house fell off my collage! I had just come back from court and was sitting in my room sobbing and I heard something fall. I looked up and the miniature house had fallen off the collage.

In a nutshell, it is important to use the arts because it reveals the depths of the unconscious, and if the time is right and the person is ready, it helps bring it to consciousness. Basically, it seems like the arts are a more direct route to all the gooey, dark, hard stuff to be explored.