Workshop: Emotional Alchemy for the Therapist’s Soul

Emotional Alchemy for the Therapist’s Soul is a 3-part experiential seminar for therapists, counselors, and healing professionals who want to tend to their own inner world between sessions. Through guided painting, reflective discussion, and psychoanalytic insight, we’ll explore how creative process can help you hold what you carry and return to the work with greater clarity and care. This is not about technique or making art for clients—it’s about making space for you. Come with paper, paint, and a willingness to see what’s waiting beneath the surface.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the stages of the Emotional Alchemy process (naming, holding, metabolizing, transmuting, integrating) and explain how each stage supports therapist self-reflection and emotional regulation.

2. Demonstrate the use of intuitive painting as a self-tending tool for processing emotional residue and preparing for clinical work.

3. Differentiate between cognitive reflection and embodied emotional processing, and discuss the role of image-making in accessing unconscious material.

4. Evaluate the impact of personal emotional states on therapeutic presence and plan creative self-care rituals to support ongoing clinical clarity.

5. Identify countertransference signals through reflective art-making and summarize how these insights can inform ethical and attuned therapeutic practice.

Note: since this seminar has a strong experiential component, participants will need to have some simple art supplies on hand. Nothing fancy—letter-sized paper (or a sketchpad), markers, crayons, paints if they want, etc. The main thing is that you have a few materials ready to engage with the creative process each week.