When someone says, I feel like a stranger to myself, I often reach for the paint, the soft pastels, sometimes a fistful of clay. Identity is rarely a set of tidy sentences. It is layered like a palimpsest, pieces written over other pieces, parts silenced, parts exaggerated. Art therapy gives those parts a visible form. When words collapse into generalities, a single charcoal line can say, here is my edge. A collage of torn maps can admit, here is where I’m lost.
I have sat with teenagers, new parents, people starting over after decades in one role, and clients learning what it means to live in a body after illness. Again and again, images open doors no intake questionnaire can find. Not every door should be yanked open, of course. Pacing matters. Materials matter. The frame we use to make sense of the work matters. But the act of making, with a witness who knows how to look, tends to bring alive the question beneath most therapy: who am I now, and who am I becoming.
When images speak before language
The brain processes visuals faster than language, and nonverbal memory often carries more emotion than tidy narratives. This is one reason trauma therapy often gets traction when we widen beyond talk. A person who cannot explain why certain comments ignite panic might paint a small red box in the corner of every page, https://garretteudo595.lowescouponn.com/the-artist-within-using-art-therapy-to-process-grief then notice it appears whenever they imagine being evaluated. Another client, mute for half a session, once pressed their thumbs into wet clay and said, That. The clay held the press of their history and the pressure of now at the same time.
Art therapy is not about making something pretty, and it is not just coloring to soothe the nerves. The work is to create a container, visual and relational, where you can experiment with forms of self. The page is a safe stage. You see yourself as doer and observer, creator and created. In psychodynamic therapy we talk about the transitional space, the in between where play becomes serious and serious things can be played with. Art making is built for that space.
Materials that mirror identity
Identity is felt in the hands. People who grew up walking on eggshells often choose pencils that make erasable marks, then stack rulers and align each edge. Others grab oil pastels and keep going until color swallows color. I notice the impulse, not to judge, but to help a client track how preference maps to personhood.
A few patterns recur. Watercolor tends to invite tolerance of uncertainty. You can lay a wash, tilt the paper, and watch boundaries blur. Clay brings weight and resistance, good for grounding and for renegotiating force. Collage lets people borrow images, then curate what belongs and what doesn’t, a direct analogue for sifting cultural messages. Fiber work like weaving or stitching offers a slow, rhythmic way to integrate disparate threads. The medium is not neutral. It teaches and mirrors.
I also pay attention to scale. Working large can embolden a timid voice, yet overwhelm someone with hyperarousal. Pocket-sized notebooks make good travel companions when shame or fear narrows the field of vision. Tuning the match between medium, scale, and the client’s nervous system is part of the craft.
Frameworks that help us read the work
I rarely sit in a single theoretical camp. Identity unfolds on multiple levels, and different frameworks shine light at different angles. Three show up most in my practice because they map cleanly onto the art therapy process.
In psychodynamic therapy we look for patterns that repeat, often out of awareness. In the studio, repetition is easy to see. The fourth painting with the same stranded figure tells us more than one tearful session about loneliness. We also watch for shifts in form. A client who starts adding a second figure to their scenes may be ready to risk connection, even before they can say it. The transference, the way old relational templates get projected onto the therapist, can be explored using the artwork as a third object, a place where both client and therapist see and comment without direct confrontation.
Internal Family Systems, or IFS, fits art therapy especially well. If you have never met your parts on paper, it can be surprising how quickly they make themselves known. A driven protector might show up as a ruler-straight skyline, inked in black, while an exiled child appears as a tiny bird at the page’s edge. The act of drawing parts beside, not on top of, each other resembles the inner diplomacy IFS invites. Parts gain form, names, colors, and preferences. The Self, in the IFS sense, can be pictured too, often as a color field or a landscape with good light. The art becomes a conference table where all sides get a seat.
Good trauma therapy builds enough safety and choice into the process that the body does not relive more than it can integrate. In art terms, that means titration and consent. We might paint around the edges of a hard memory, work with metaphors, or move between grounding materials like clay and more evocative ones like ink. Imagery lets us build distance when needed. A client can place a jagged form on the far right of the page and say, It stays there. That separateness allows for approach without flood.
The studio as a laboratory of self
When someone enters the studio, they enter an agreement. We are here to try things that can matter. The room itself teaches. Shelves labeled by medium hint at boundaries. A sink and towels give permission to make a mess. Chairs with wheels warn that the ground can slide if not chosen carefully.
Identity exploration benefits from a few consistent rules. One, consent around sharing. The client chooses which images to discuss, which to store, which to destroy. Two, pace. Art can open doors faster than talk. I often ask, If this image could speak, what would it say, and do you want to hear it today. Three, cultural humility. An image of braided hair or a family altar carries histories I might not share. I ask, not assume. Four, collaboration. I sometimes make alongside clients, not to demonstrate technique, but to demystify the risk of making a mark. Two people drawing in silence can create more safety than twenty minutes of eye contact.
Vignettes from practice
Consider an adolescent of mixed heritage, toggling between languages at home and English at school. Words about identity feel like a debate. In art, she makes a series of maps. Each map uses different cartographic rules. One marks where she is loud and where she goes quiet. Another uses colors her grandmother wore. She stitches the maps into a soft atlas and realizes she has agency over which one to open on a given day. She stops using the phrase I don’t belong and replaces it with I’m multizoned. No therapist’s lecture could have granted that shift. The book in her backpack could.
A man in his forties, high performing in a career that once excited him, arrives with a flattened affect. He paints mechanical forms for a month, straight edges, cool palette, no figures. We name this part the Engineer, useful and exhausted. One day he adds a small, ridiculous orange fish in the corner. We laugh, a good sign. Over several sessions the fish grows. It becomes a river. He remembers building kites as a kid. In IFS language, a playful exile is surfacing, not to sabotage, but to rebalance. Practically, he starts blocking two hours on Fridays to work with his hands. Six months later, he is still in the same job. He reports more appetite for risk, less resentful sarcasm at home, and a capacity to say no to meetings he used to accept automatically. The river did not topple the machine. It ran through it.
A woman in eating disorder therapy grapples with a hostile relationship to her body. Mirrors are landmines. We do not begin with body tracing or self-portraiture. That would be too much, too soon. Instead, she paints weather. The storm systems line up with the days her urge to restrict spikes. Eventually she experiments with clay, first tools only, no touch. Later, with consent, we add hands. She notices she can apply pressure without bruising the form. That awareness, felt in the palm, translates to feeding herself without equating fullness with failure. We keep language careful. She chooses verbs like nourish and house. On a hard day she can make a small bowl and keep it empty as a statement of choice, not punishment. Over months, bowls begin to hold color. The artwork does not cure. It adds a vocabulary of care.
Simple ways to begin if identity feels hazy
- Make a two-color timeline of your week, with one color for what you did for others and one for yourself. Keep it to ten minutes. Draw a room where every object represents a value you hold. Rearrange the room until it feels like home. Pick three materials that feel different, like pencil, watercolor, and collage. Make one image with each about the same question. Notice which medium helps you say more. Create a family of symbols for your parts. Give them names, colors, and one rule each for how they help or hinder you. Paint your day as weather. Track how the patterns repeat over a month.
Each prompt can be scaled up or down. The goal is not mastery. It is contact with the felt sense of who is here today.
Working near trauma without burning the edges
Art invites intensity. It also demands respect for thresholds. In trauma therapy I watch arousal like a hawk. Before entering charged themes, we develop at least three reliable anchors. One client keeps a smooth stone in water to hold between pieces. Another uses a grounding image taped to the table, a forest path or a city stoop that feels like home. We limit exposure by gesture. If the body tightens, we switch from sweeping strokes to dotting or from bright inks to graphite. The nervous system reads those changes as less threat.
I pay attention to dissociation. If a client starts to drift, I invite them to trace the border of the page slowly, eyes open, naming corners. Sometimes we pause the art entirely. The picture will wait. We build choice into every step. Would you like to tear this page, fold it, or leave it whole. If a client feels compelled to destroy an image, we might ritualize it outdoors, then document what the act meant. The point is not to force insight, but to practice agency around what to approach, when, and how long.
Eating disorder work and the politics of the body
Identity often collides with the body, and nowhere is that more charged than in eating disorder therapy. The art room becomes a counter-narrative to years of control strategies. Instead of numbers and mirrors, we use texture, weight, and appetite for color. Self-portraiture can be helpful, but only when the client has enough support to see more than flaws. Early on, indirect approaches tend to land better. Drawing foods as landscapes, mapping hunger as tides, or painting the stomach as a garden people different plots with different needs can sidestep shame while still contacting the body.
One exercise I return to is the Boundaries Plate. On a large sheet, draw a circle as big as a dinner plate. Around it, place images or words for what nourishes you besides food. Inside, collage symbols for the foods you fear, the foods you love, and the foods tied to memory. The work is not to moralize, but to notice which parts of you speak when you look at the plate. The rule-maker might demand rules. The lonely part might want sweetness. The athlete might need fuel. Bringing internal family systems into the room helps people differentiate voices that used to masquerade as one all-powerful critic.
I also watch how clients treat materials. Those who starve themselves sometimes starve the page, using tiny marks, rationed paint, white space as punishment. Gently encouraging a fuller stroke or adding a second brush loaded with color can spark curiosity about satiety in art, which occasionally opens a window toward satiety in life. We celebrate capacity to stop, to continue tomorrow, to leave a corner unfilled not from fear, but from choice.
What progress looks like when identity is moving
Progress in art therapy is not a straight line from stick figures to masterpieces. I look for shifts in flexibility and authorship. A client who once followed instructions to the letter starts altering prompts. Another who hid every image in a manila folder begins pinning a few to a corkboard. Someone who avoided red for months suddenly uses it to outline a boundary. These micro-moves often predate larger life changes, like ending a role that no longer fits or asserting a need in a relationship.
Setbacks happen. An image that shatters a fragile calm can feel like betrayal. We mark those moments and ask what the picture did that words could not. Sometimes the best intervention is to go back to basics, draw breath lines moving across a page for five minutes, or return to a favorite color wash. Integration has a rhythm. Knowing when to push and when to protect is part art, part science, and mostly about the relationship.
Groups, families, and identities in conversation
Group art therapy can accelerate identity work by making difference visible and safe. I have watched a circle of strangers draw their names, then trade pages and embellish one another’s letters with care. People see themselves through others’ lines, sometimes with more kindness than they can muster alone. In family sessions, a shared mural becomes a rehearsal for conflict and collaboration. Who takes the center. Who waits. Who erases. We talk about those moves, then make adjustments, low stakes on paper before high stakes at home.
Cultural identity benefits from communal witnessing. A client painting a religious symbol may feel relief when another group member recognizes it and asks a curious question. The studio at its best is a microculture where multiple truths sit side by side. We protect that by setting norms around consent, confidentiality, and not interpreting another’s image unless invited.
Doing this work at home, safely
- Set a time boundary, like twenty minutes. Use a simple prompt and decide in advance where the art will live after you finish. Choose two grounding practices you can use if the work stirs you up, for example feet on the floor while naming five textures in the room, or holding an ice cube for thirty seconds. End each session by writing two sentences about what you made, no analysis, just description. If a piece feels too hot, seal it in an envelope or cover it with tissue paper and tape the edges. Return only when you have support. Keep materials low stakes. A small watercolor set, a glue stick, a magazine to cut up, and a soft pencil are enough.
If you notice persistent spikes in distress, nightmares tied to the work, or urges to harm yourself, that is data. Bring the art to a therapist trained in trauma therapy or an art therapist who can help pace the process.
When art therapy is not the right tool
Some clients find the visual field too stimulating. Others dislike mess or feel judged by their own internal critic every time they draw. I never force art. We can work with imagery in other ways, through metaphor in language, through movement, through sound. There are also moments when the focus needs to shift. Acute psychosis, active substance withdrawal, or medical instability in eating disorders can require stabilization before identity exploration. Safety first does not negate the value of art. It sets the conditions for art to help rather than harm.
Ethics, training, and what to ask for
A credentialed art therapist has training in both clinical practice and studio processes. Ask about experience with your specific concerns, whether that is grief, cultural identity questions, or eating disorder therapy. If your therapist integrates internal family systems, psychodynamic therapy, or somatic approaches, inquire how those models appear in session. You want a clinician who can explain why they choose certain materials or prompts and who welcomes your feedback about what helps or overwhelms.
Confidentiality applies to images too. Your work deserves the same respect as your words. Discuss storage. Some clients prefer to keep work at the clinic to reduce self-criticism between sessions. Others want it close. Digital photography of each piece can create a safe archive without clutter.
The gift and grit of making your self visible
If you step into an art therapy room hoping to discover a final, fixed identity, you might be disappointed. Identity behaves more like a living studio than a finished gallery. There will be drafts, and some will deserve the recycling bin. There will also be moments that land with a physical thunk, like laying down a color you did not know you loved, or recognizing a part of you that has been carrying weight for years and finally putting it down. I have seen tears fall onto paper and leave marks that felt truer than the most persuasive speech.
The promise of art therapy is modest and profound. It gives you a way to locate yourself, today, in a form you can see, touch, and revisit. It lets you talk with your parts without pitting them against each other. It partners well with trauma therapy, with psychodynamic thinking, with the pragmatic pacing required in eating disorder therapy. It respects culture and context. It insists on consent. And it invites you to practice authorship, which is a fancier way of saying you get to choose more of your life.
That choosing tends to begin with small acts. Pull a line across a page. Let it wobble. Add a second. Notice the distance between them, the path you might walk. Give it a name you want to carry for a while. Continue next week.
Name: Ruberti Counseling Services
Address: 525 S. 4th Street, Suite 367, Philadelphia, PA 19147
Phone: 215-330-5830
Website: https://www.ruberticounseling.com/
Email: [email protected]
Hours:
Monday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Tuesday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Wednesday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Thursday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Friday: Closed
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed
Open-location code (plus code): WVR2+QF Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
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Ruberti Counseling Services provides LGBTQ-affirming therapy in Philadelphia for individuals, teens, transgender people, and partners seeking thoughtful, specialized care.
The practice focuses on concerns such as disordered eating, body image struggles, OCD, anxiety, trauma, and identity-related stress.
Based in Philadelphia, Ruberti Counseling Services offers in-person sessions locally and online therapy across Pennsylvania.
Clients can explore services that include art therapy, Internal Family Systems, psychodynamic therapy, ERP therapy for OCD, and trauma therapy.
The practice is designed for people who want affirming support that respects the intersections of mental health, identity, relationships, and lived experience.
People looking for a Philadelphia counselor can contact Ruberti Counseling Services at 215-330-5830 or visit https://www.ruberticounseling.com/.
The office is located at 525 S. 4th Street, Suite 367, Philadelphia, PA 19147, with nearby neighborhood access from Society Hill, Queen Village, Center City, and Old City.
A public map listing is also available for local reference and business lookup connected to the Philadelphia office.
For clients seeking LGBTQ-affirming counseling in Philadelphia with online availability across Pennsylvania, Ruberti Counseling Services offers both local access and statewide flexibility.
Popular Questions About Ruberti Counseling Services
What does Ruberti Counseling Services help with?
Ruberti Counseling Services helps with disordered eating, body image concerns, OCD, anxiety, trauma, and LGBTQ- and gender-related support needs.
Is Ruberti Counseling Services located in Philadelphia?
Yes. The practice lists its office at 525 S. 4th Street, Suite 367, Philadelphia, PA 19147.
Does Ruberti Counseling Services offer online therapy?
Yes. The website states that online therapy is available across Pennsylvania in addition to in-person therapy in Philadelphia.
What therapy approaches are offered?
The site highlights art therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), psychodynamic therapy, Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy, and trauma therapy.
Who does the practice serve?
The practice is geared toward LGBTQ individuals, teens, transgender folks, and their partners, while also supporting clients dealing with food, body image, trauma, and OCD-related concerns.
What neighborhoods does Ruberti Counseling Services mention near the office?
The official site references Society Hill, Queen Village, Center City, and Old City as nearby neighborhoods.
How do I contact Ruberti Counseling Services?
You can call 215-330-5830, email [email protected], visit https://www.ruberticounseling.com/, or connect on social media:
Instagram
Facebook
Landmarks Near Philadelphia, PA
Society Hill – The official site specifically says the practice offers specialized therapy in Society Hill, making this one of the clearest local reference points.Queen Village – Listed by the practice as a nearby neighborhood for the Philadelphia office.
Center City – The site references both Center City access and a Center City location context for clients traveling from central Philadelphia.
Old City – Another nearby neighborhood named directly on the official site.
South Philadelphia – The Philadelphia location page mentions serving clients from South Philadelphia and surrounding areas.
University City – Named on the location page as part of the broader Philadelphia area served by the practice.
Fishtown – Included on the official location page as part of the wider Philadelphia service reach.
Gayborhood – The location page references Philadelphia’s LGBTQ+ community and the Gayborhood as part of the city context that informs the practice’s work.
If you are looking for counseling in Philadelphia, Ruberti Counseling Services offers a Society Hill office location with online therapy available across Pennsylvania.