I can be good at strategizing. I can also be somewhat anxious. Put those two together, and what do you get? A mindset where I'm trying to anticipate and plan for every possible risk in advance. (Believe me, that's no way to live!)
When I notice myself doing this, I try to shift to a…
Continue reading
Technology, particularly device and computer apps, is a wiz-bang fabulous time saver to help you get your grad school life sorted and into maintenance mode. Plus, the entire campus is wired, which means you have access to your SWC email, and the world wide web, from any device while at school.
Being an über organized…
Continue reading
When I'm unhappy, it's often because I'm not getting what I want. What to do at a time like this? I might try identifying the needs behind my wants. Identifying my unmet needs can help me have more compassion for myself—but it doesn't shift me out of my self-enclosed, solipsistic state. It's easy to keep…
Continue reading
I view my meditation practice as a process of surrendering to my "true self." (My true self is the same as your true self.)
Surrendering to my true self is related to the practice of doing nothing. Doing nothing doesn't mean that my mind stops or my body stops; it means that my personality isn't…
Continue reading
What do you get when you rock a holistic, integrative, soulful curriculum and approach to Art Therapy and Counseling, in an innovative and powerfully transformational dual degree program? You get soul-making at the graduate level, an exponentially mentally, emotionally, energetically, and otherwise, experiential and life-changing experience.
I knew that Southwestern College's M.A. in Art Therapy/Counseling…
Continue reading
Second-year student, Sylvan Schneider, offers his reflection on navigating his own therapeutic approach and being a student therapist at the Southwestern Counseling Center. …
Continue reading
Santa Fe is awesome as a grad school destination and city. Check out a few of the honors awarded to "The City Different" below (read the entire "Best of Santa Fe" Chamber of Commerce post here detailing many more awards):
Santa Fe was ranked #2 City for Art Vibrancy by the National Center for Arts Research and…
Continue reading
I never thought that the coursework in a master’s degree in counseling would help me to survive a night of being stuck in Utah’s rugged, remote, and desolate Horseshoe Canyon. Nor would I have ever guessed that an education in counseling would help me transform my consciousness in a survival situation to be able to…
Continue reading
When we view others with hostility, we're more likely to try to get our needs met at their expense. Transforming our hostility into compassion can shift our approach to conflict, allowing us to respond in ways that are more beneficial for everyone involved. (By hostility, I mean those strategies, impulses and habits that tend to…
Continue reading
Santa Fe has over 300 restaurants to choose from, and chances are whatever your tummy craves, or whatever diet you are on while studying here, Santa Fe has something special for you to eat! I can’t go over every restaurant or type of food offered in town, but I can give you the list of…
Continue reading
In the the M.A. Art Therapy/Counseling program I find myself reading and/or studying quite a bit. Spending hours on end at home can be wearing. A simple change of location is enough to keep me energized and in the frame of mind to do my best work.
My top five places to study in Santa…
Continue reading
By descending down into the depths of the soul, and not primarily by a painful acquisition of many manual skills, the artist attains the power of awakening other souls.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Art therapy is a mental health profession in which clients, facilitated by the art therapist, use art media, the creative process,…
Continue reading
by Deb Schroder
If car designers only knew what art therapists truly need (not that we’re a big enough group to be listened to by the auto industry). We turn our mediocre, ordinary car trunks into Mobile Metaphor Containment Units – we drive around with art pieces stashed in the only container that exists in…
Continue reading
I read lots of books. I used to do a lot of underlining and note taking in those books—then I would file the books away on my bookshelf as a storehouse of knowledge.
Eventually, I started to notice something: I never went back to any of those books to look at my notes and underlines.…
Continue reading
Southwestern College Santa Fe, NM