Merche Moriana: "Art is intrinsic to the human being".

Merche Moriana talks to us about how creative therapies help regulate emotions.

Emotions are never something that influence us in a unidirectional way: in the same way that they have an effect on us, as individuals we can also adopt strategies and routines that allow us to modulate them, although we can never control them completely.

An example of this can be found in the use of creative therapies as a way to manage stress and various types of emotions with the and various types of emotions that can wear us down psychologically if they appear in excess. Here we will talk about it with an expert in the field of art therapy, Merche Moriana.

Interview with Merche Moriana: positive stress management with creative therapies.

Merche Moriana is a coach and art therapist with a practice in Barcelona and Esplugues de Llobregat, and also offers her services through the Internet. In this interview, she talks about the potential of creative therapies to improve stress management skills.

Does art have therapeutic potential?

That's a very interesting question. Art is something intrinsic to human beings, we have been representing the world on walls and creating objects with an aesthetic purpose since prehistoric times.

This seems to be due to the fact that the artistic behavior of the human being resides in the development of our brain. On the one hand, the ability to organize and interpret sensory information. On the other hand, it has a function of social connection. The human being needs for his psychological well-being to be with other humans. And art brings together personal and collective memory for its transmission is what we know as culture.

Thus, the artistic production of the person is spontaneous and allows to restore the natural ability of the individual to relate to himself and the world around him more satisfactorily.

The therapeutic value lies precisely there, in the exploration of the environment or conflict in a safe way, through the symbolic value of these mental constructions. In other words, artistic production is the symbolic representation of the individual's life. And from that representation we can offer a therapeutic path.

Can it be said that creativity is, among other things, a way of channeling and expressing painful emotions?

Of course it is. Creativity is going into the unknown, or unexplored, so it can be applied to cognitive development and the subjective component of emotions.

Entering into painful emotions involves reliving certain traumatic situations, so it is natural that certain resistances appear or mechanisms are activated to avoid feeling them.

However, artistic production allows them to be explored in an indirect way, without addressing the emotion itself, but in its symbolic form. A dialogue is established between this new form and the individual. We access the event to be transformed by reinterpreting its emotional content.

This happens because during the creative process several areas of our brain are activated, including different memory systems, such as episodic, where autobiographical details are contained, and categorical memory, which contains information about the world, oneself and others. And other brain areas related to the formation of associations and synthesis.

From your point of view, what are the basic pillars of creative therapies?

First of all, it is important to clarify that the purpose of creative therapies is not aesthetic. Creativity is not limited to painting, sculpture, music or dance. Although we tend to associate it with "producing something", creativity is also about looking for new, more adequate answers, instead of remaining stagnant; it is to review that it is necessary to change.

The pillars of creative therapies, for me, are fundamentally three. The first is to help the person explore his or her inner experience and subjective meaning. The second is to emphasize specific human characteristics such as decisiveness and self-realization. And the third is to develop the person's inherent potential, so that he or she becomes the author of his or her own life, i.e., directs his or her life and not the unresolved past events.

Can everyone be creative by learning to be creative through exercises?

Yes, of course. Being creative is an intellectual resource that can be developed and encouraged. We are all creative, in our own way, each one of us develops and uses our creativity every day, since creativity is the ability to generate new ideas, to think originally.

To foster creativity, curiosity must be reinforced; ask questions, investigate, experiment and lose the fear of error. Inconveniences become opportunities to see things differently.

Creativity helps us to be more motivated, to have more positive thoughts, being enriching the contact with the environment.

To free our creative impulse the first step is to get rid of the prejudices that have been acquired throughout life. Through sensory perception, such as touch, sight ... you can start the creative game and open up to new stimuli.

For this reason, the creative experience is ideal, since it allows to play, to experiment through the senses with paint, paper, clay, music and other elements, with the intention of expressing and communicating.

In the case of stress management, how can the potential of creativity be harnessed?

The origin of stress is given in the perception of a certain imbalance between the demands, external or internal, and the resources available to overcome it. Therefore, creativity is the ability to find solutions or innovative contributions to overcome these situations, whether they are everyday or vital.

It also has a protective effect, as it has been scientifically proven that performing a creative activity for 45 minutes reduces cortisol levels, the stress hormone.

Creative expression is a stress modulator because it helps to express and communicate feelings, facilitating reflection, communication, as a consequence stress is reduced in interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships.

How do changes for the better occur in the person who learns to modulate stress by enhancing his or her creative side?

What I see as a clear indicator that changes are taking place is the person's mood. They go from being sad, worried, anxious to gradually feeling lighter, more expressive, more smiling.

Creativity makes us more optimistic, it tells us something like; even if you can't see it now I know you will find a solution. And to be more resilient, we accept inconveniences, uncertainty and suffering as part of life. You learn from experiences and integrate them into a new mental map. What yesterday made me suffer, today is something tangible that I can modulate with my own hands.

I love it when I see the transformation in their faces, from the moment they start an exercise with mistrust and certain reservations, to the pride and satisfaction when they finish it. Creative therapy is an active therapy, the person actively participates in their improvement, in this way self-esteem is benefited, prejudices towards oneself are overcome and the fear of facing situations for fear of them being stressful is lost. In short, you feel self-effective and valuable, so you adapt more flexibly to the experiences.