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SOUND: [Cars driving by]

SOUND: [Hannah Pietra playing piano]

HANNAH PIETRA: And glimmers are these brief little moments that bring us joy; our comforts; or curiosity. So take a moment and think back to earlier today, to a small moment that brought you joy, peace, or curiosity.

HANNAH PIETRA: My name is Hannah Pietra. I am a board-certified music therapist and a licensed creative arts therapist. I guess my overall role here is both a therapist — so I do both individual and group therapy — and then I also coordinate and lead different arts-based programs for older adults in early memory loss.

For specifically music therapy sessions, I use different music therapy interventions or exercises, activities. It could range from singing music, playing instruments, songwriting, listening to music, and discussing the lyrics and the song themes. So it really depends on what the interests are of the person, what the goals that we're working on.

For clients that I am just doing more traditional talk therapy and then incorporating different creative arts modalities and music therapy, again, it's as much as they want it to be a part of their talk therapy.

In my office right now I have my keyboard, guitar, I have a couple different drums and percussion instruments, so I always have that on hand. For the moment, if a person wants to engage in instrumental music making or I use it as a way to support, maybe, a song that we are using or music-assisted relaxation.

If I'm traveling to a person's home, I might bring just my guitar. I've done a couple of groups where I've brought all my percussion instruments and my guitar for the whole group to engage in music-making. Even though I'm not an art therapist, I do incorporate different arts-based exercises in a therapeutic way because it helps. You know, I found, there is a lot of time where words don't express how they are feeling, or it is helpful to process things through art before further processing verbally. So I'll allow someone to really explore parts of themselves or recognize parts of themselves that they wouldn't otherwise in just straight-up talking.

I guess specifically with art, I lead a creative arts group for early memory loss and I do a variety of different arts modalities there. Part of that group is to really encourage their own aging journey in a healthy way where instead of focusing on skills they are losing, they are gaining new skills and they are gaining new parts of their identity. So seeing people explore that through their art, and to be able to create something and be really proud of what they came up with, that is really rewarding to me.

But also from a music stance, seeing how people's whole moods, whole behaviors, emotions can change just with a particular song or style of music; and hearing stories, like personal stories, connected through their arts experiences is such a pleasure.

HANNAH PIETRA: So this is a rewritten song of "My Favorite Things", rewritten by Syracuse Jewish Family Services participants from the Empower You Arts and Minds community, and it is written about their favorite things.

SOUND: [Hannah Pietra playing guitar and singing]

BETH DAWKINS: So I looked on your website and you offer a service labeled "Counseling for Creatives." Could you tell me more about that, or kind of just explain it in a way for people who wouldn't know what that means?

HANNAH PIETRA: Yeah, so it's basically counseling, but more geared towards creative people. Meaning that there is a lot of particular challenges that creative people face, so it helps to have someone who understands the creative process and what goes into having either a creative career or trying to make time to engage in creative hobbies. So that form of counseling is just geared towards the type of challenges those people would face.

So I work with Syracuse Jewish Family Service, we are a social service non-profit agency. We are very community-based, we are located within Menorah Park, but we work with all ages: so my youngest right now is in Kindergarten, my oldest is an 80-year-old. So for me, and for those interested, creative arts is for anyone; any age, any ability, any experience. As a trained clinician, we know how to work with people of any type of experience level, any type of need or goal, and you don't have to be a professional or an expert, that's the joy of it. It's just using music and art in a therapeutic way that reaches levels that just talking one-on-one can't do.

SOUND: [Hannah Pietra playing piano]

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ZAH PEET: 'Cus this is kinda like a broad question like, 'what do I use' because I'm literally like Willy Wonka in here, it's just random stuff.

SOUND: [Beth laughs]

ZAH PEET: Like I don't really have a plan, because I think what I've learned is like, when you have a plan, it gets in the way. Because when you're working with people, it's such an organic process, and what I love is that people always surprise me.

SOUND: [Water running, water stops]

SOUND: [Water steams from electric kettle]

BETH DAWKINS: This is Therapy for the Healing Mind. This time, through art. I'm Beth Dawkins, your host. Today I am joined by two art therapists from the Central New York Syracuse area. Each has a different approach, but they share a passion and commitment to serving their clients and their mental health needs. So grab your tea, get comfortable, and listen along as we explore the world of art therapy for mental health.

SOUND: [Water steams from electric kettle]

SOUND: [Water pours into cup, kettle goes back on]

SOUND: [Soft music]

TIFFANY POLLACK GUENTHER: My name is Tiffany Pollack Guenther. I'm a licensed creative arts therapist, I'm practicing in New York State. I have a private practice that has been open in the Central New York area for a few years. The population that I work with is primarily children and adults, it's a mix. And a lot of the people I work with have a diagnosis of autism or another kind of developmental disability or another kind of neurodivergent experience in the world.

BETH DAWKINS: So, what is art therapy?

TIFFANY POLLACK GUENTHER: So art therapy is... basically, art therapy is a mental health service that usually incorporates some kind of visual art making. The use of visual art and the use of the process of making the art is a big part of how we get to some of the insight that we might not always get with verbal language if that makes sense.

BETH DAWKINS: What does a typical day or session look like?

TIFFANY POLLACK GUENTHER: So it's really client led. It'll be quite different based on the specific person. For an adult, it's often, you know, exploring materials and understanding what materials feel good in terms of a sensory experience or what ways we can use art materials to help illustrate or add information to what somebody is talking about.

I might be sort of just witnessing what a client is doing with art materials and being able to just let the person know they are being witnessed. I have an expertise in it but I also see the client as the expert, ultimately, in terms of what their experience is and what's true.

BETH DAWKINS: What supplies do you typically offer?

SOUND: [Paint brush on paper]

SOUND: [Marker in cardboard]

SOUND: [Paint brush in water dish]

SOUND: [Beads moving]

TIFFANY POLLACK GUENTHER: I love using paint with clients, I love using markers. I love when people can make slime or they can do play dough, or make a sculpture out of clay. I love using collage with people.

BETH DAWKINS: What's a benefit of art therapy?

TIFFANY POLLACK GUENTHER: Art therapy often lets us see what our strengths are.

BETH DAWKINS: What do you find rewarding about this work?

TIFFANY POLLACK GUENTHER: I think everything about this work is rewarding. I don't know, I just, I feel super lucky to be able to be in private practice, 'cus then I'm my own boss. I also think that like art therapy as a field, just, we do have access to a lot of rewarding things. Because we can always, I mean for me, I can always go back to making art.

BETH DAWKINS: My last question is just, is there anything else you'd like to share about your work?

TIFFANY POLLACK GUENTHER: I mean I guess I can say that in our state right now, in New York State right now, it's hard for a lot of people to access art therapy because a lot of the insurance companies that will give mental health coverage don't recognize art, the LCAT license, as like, not all of them recognize the LCAT license as something where we can be in network with their insurance company. And I think that becomes a barrier.

BETH DAWKINS: That was Tiffany. Next, I'll sit down with Zah.

ZAH PEET: Well my name is Zakiyyah Peet, but I go by Zah. So I'm a licensed art therapist here in Syracuse.

BETH DAWKINS: What does a typical day look like?

ZAH PEET: So what I typically do, I might have like two to three clients a day. If it's really hectic out, if the energies are high out there and I can tell with my clients, like what the social-mental state is; like for instance, after the election, I had a lot of clients that were really high stress. So most I have had is like five clients a day.

So typically what they do, they'll come in...it's different for every client. Because with art therapy you can do...this is how I do it. It's either you can give an art therapy assessment, which is what we learned in art therapy school, where there is a certain amount of assessments that you can give clients that have specific materials and you'll tell them to draw certain things and we are trained to analyze it and pull out certain things with that drawing. Then what I also do if I'm not giving an assessment is I gauge what's going on with the client. So I give them specific materials depending on their mood or their stressors. So if someone comes in, and mind you, this is my personal, every art therapist is different. So someone's coming in, they are very... say they are crying a lot and they can't like get their words out, they can't really focus, I give them, (I have Model Magic), I just put that in their hand and they won't even think anything of it, it's just like a fidget. So they just start squeezing it, and what can happen is that they can then calm down and talk to me. So the energy that is all stress, it gets transferred into the clay.

So I do contract work with like EAP programs. So, like, a lot of people don't even know you can do this, even if you like, I don't know, if you work at Wegmans for something, they have EAP part of the job. So if you're stressed out you can go to your HR department and say, like say if you've never been to therapy, say 'I wanna use my employee assistance program' and they will give you eight sessions just to try it out with a therapist.

BETH DAWKINS: That's great.

ZAH PEET: A lot of people don't know, it's been around for years.

BETH DAWKINS: What supplies do you typically offer

ZAH PEET: I have clients that I have been working with for years honestly.

SOUND: [Light music]

ZAH PEET: So with them, they've had like all of my assessments, but we'll come in here and I can ask them at that point, okay what material do you wanna work with?' So I have like sticker by numbers books, adult coloring books, I got games, like puzzles and stuff like that; clay, string, canvas, paint, gem paintings, which I love those.

SOUND: [Zah's nails clicking on the table]

BETH DAWKINS: Mhm, yes.

ZAH PEET: And I can give those to the clients who say, like, 'I'm not good at art', you know, so they will do that. Watercolor brings out emotions so quickly, I've noticed with clients.

BETH DAWKINS: Interesting.

ZAH PEET: Yeah because water is a very powerful element. Even with clients who say, like 'I can't draw.' I'm into astrology and things like that, I do natal charts. So I use like oracle cards, too, with my clients. Because people don't realize that there is so much energy between people.

They come in here and they're like, 'Can you take out the astrology cards?' or something, or I'll tell them what's going on with the planets and stuff, based on their natal chart. Because it's like we don't do art every session, with everyone.

BETH DAWKINS: What do you see as the benefits of art therapy for those struggling with mental health issues?

ZAH PEET: I think it's a great communication tool. The benefits of art therapy is that, it can be used with anybody. It helps people to communicate when they don't know how.

BETH DAWKINS: Is there anything else you'd like to share?

ZAH PEET: A huge thing that's going on with my clients is that their insurance won't cover it. I think there's not unity among all art therapists. And then there's also, like, people need to do more research when they are meeting with someone, like what are their credentials, what do they do; but also that we need to talk to our government about getting art therapy covered.

SOUND: [Music starts]

BETH DAWKINS: Insurance remains an issue for those seeking coverage, but awareness of the issue is the first step.

TIFFANY POLLACK GUENTHER: I think that art therapists here in New York, at least, and in probably a lot of places, just know that they could be helping more people but, you know, can't really do it because of the way that the insurance piece works.

BETH DAWKINS: Thank you so much to both of our guests and thank you so much for tuning in. This is Therapy for the Healing Mind.

SOUND: [Music ends]