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July/August 2008 Featured Stories
SoulCollage: Letting Your Soul Speak Through Art

by Suzie Wolfer, LCSW

Using simple recycled materials, including magazine images, mat board and a glue stick, you can open the doorway to your own personal Muses, Wise Elders and Jokers.

SoulCollage is a creative and satisfying collage process where you make your own deck of collage cards representing aspects of your personality or soul. You then use the collage cards to intuitively answer life's questions and participate in self-discovery.

SoulCollage helps to safely and gently explore feelings of isolation, grief and anger. When we call on our inner wisdom, we transform difficult emotions into a sense of belonging, celebration and aliveness. As we acknowledge and heal this split between body and mind, we open the door to our own wisdom again.

When I introduce the SoulCollage process to my psychotherapy clients, and they consult the card drawn "randomly," the answers seem to come more quickly. Resolutions to seemingly unsolvable dilemmas come forward. Aliveness returns.

Some clients have found that naming the problem, for example The Con Artist or The Saleswoman, can start a helpful dialogue. The simple act of engaging in a dialogue, also known as externalizing, separates the person from the problem, and turns the problem into something that can be witnessed and solved.

SoulCollage imagery takes the deeply coded information of the body, emotions and mind, and converts it to a picture that stands in for the thoughts, impulses and emotions swirling around inside you. The cards act as placeholders, calling upon your wisdom, as well as your wounding, and thus are more easily accessed. This deeply coded imagery opens the door to knowledge that our logical mind would never deduce.

For example, a SoulCollage workshop participant was struggling with frustration with her family. She tried to fit in, tried to be interested in and take part in what seemed to her a narrow view of the world. When she finally made an Ugly Duckling card, it signaled not only acceptance of her own unique gifts, but also helped her accept her family as well.

Imagery expresses more completely and accurately the problem and therefore a more complete solution. The body/mind knows and instinctively chooses colors, patterns and images that manifest your inner truth. Through imagery, what the mind may only dimly grasp can be consciously expressed.

Words and thoughts leave behind a mountain of experience and meaning, acting like cliff note abbreviations of our complete experience. Words only interpret and distill a much larger experience. Our neocortex thrills at solving problems, simplifying and strategizing. And this amazing capability enables us to avoid danger, intuit good/bad, right/wrong or acceptable/unacceptable situations. But like a funnel, our thoughts squeeze, grind and distill our authentic experience, making it less accessible in our day-to-day walk through life.

Imagery takes us out of the gravity well of logical thought. Rich in complexity and nuance, imagery continues to give long after the echoes of a written statement or words evaporate. Images stick like glue. Long after we have forgotten the words, images remain, hence their power. They keep working while we are doing other things.

The SoulCollage card can become a powerful ally when you use journaling and verbal expression to understand the point of view, needs and skills of the mosaic of your internal world.

The simple experience of dialoguing with a troublesome pattern of thoughts and behaviors creates a neutral zone, where the problem is the problem and it has a solution. Your awareness of the difference between your own point of view and the agenda of The Con Artist card is revealed. This is often felt as a physical sensation in the body, which can also be identified, named and used for healing.

Dialoging with and consulting the card alone helps you heal your issues. Here are examples of typical externalizing questions:

• What made you vulnerable to The Con Artist (or other archetype card), that he was able to dominate your life?
• In what situations is The Con Artist likely to take over?
• What has your Con Artist convinced you to do against your better judgment?

These types of questions deconstruct the story and belief that you are helpless against what is often thought of as an "addictive personality" or "character defect," which by definition have no solution, except to change or disassemble the personality or character. This false idea only serves to justify continued destructive behavior patterns. However, problems can be defined and solved much easier than personalities can be changed. SoulCollage helps you to take a quantum leap in negotiating power and empathy so the "enemy" is no longer seen as yourself. The problem is the problem, not the person.

Among my clients, I've witnessed the power of SoulCollage cards and the externalizing questions. Belinda is a 39-year-old woman who used drugs for more than 20 years. From the time she was a teenager, through the birth of her children, through her work, her divorce and in her spiritual practice, she was a regular drug user.

She calls one of her SoulCollage cards The Trickster and here is what this card had to say:

"I am the one who invites you to play. I know how to have fun, and put on an image people will love. The playground may be prickly, but you can pack up your troubles and leave them behind. I tempt you with magic and illusion when you are tired of thinking. I am the one who hides. Spend time with me and you avoid the pain that accompanies growth. Your soul goes to sleep. I am the one who pretends. I'll hand you temptation. You know you deserve time away from your real self. I will keep you from knowing your self. Fall in love with who you are and there is no time for me."

Pay attention to symbols in the SoulCollage cards you create. They are powerful teachers because symbols take us from the known to the unknown and back again. They act as transformers, like star gates that give us access to other dimensions. They produce a response and are active. As we strive to understand them, they stretch us.

Suzie Wolfer, LCSW, currently a therapist at Providence Hospital in Portland, has offered individual and group therapy for 23 years. In her private practice, she leads SoulCollage workshops and teaches art classes. Visit www.suziewolfer.com. Find more SoulCollage resources at www.soulcollage.com.