Lani Chipman - Marriage & Family Therapist, MS, LMFT

Lani Chipman

Marriage & Family Therapist, MS, LMFT

Salt Lake City, UT 84123S

Welcome to Kaleidoscope of Creative Healing Somewhere along the line we stopped being spontaneous, stopped “playing.” We replaced “What should I do today?!” with “What has to get done today?” Finding meaning – Making sense of it all… I believe the reason pinterest is so popular is because people are visual beings. Most of us have heard the saying, “seeing is believing.” We want to visualize ourselves in an exotic land, or living in the house of our dreams. When we feel this is out of reach – the next best thing is pinning it on a board where we and others can see it, because seeing is believing, and having a visual of what we desire takes us one step closer to making our desires a reality. This is why we are told to write our goals down and to place them where we can see them…though this is all fine and I understand the desire and need to better our physical and temporal circumstances, I think it is important to bear in mind that "things" do not define us and cannot satisfy our need to feel loved, to feel accepted, to feel a sense of belonging and so forth. We as humans have a tendency to depend more on our eyesight - to put more faith, and value on things that are tangible, that can be seen and bring instant gratification, rather than the unseen, intangible treasures of the heart. When we see through our heart and learn to use our heart as our lens to view the world we can connect on a deeper level to our world and each other. Ultimately, life is about our connection to not only the people around us, but our world in which we live. We each are connected to the places and environments we grew up in, the places where we were nourished and supported, and even the places where we felt alone, or abandoned. As children we learned how to love people, or how to avoid people by how we were treated by our parents and others. We learned how to trust or distrust from those who came in and out of our lives. In the beginning, we loved ourselves completely and wholly. We hadn’t yet learned how to be fearful, hateful, or judgmental. We were usually happy, unless the physical body due to pain told us otherwise. As children, we put no limitations on ourselves and we believed that anything was possible. This is why adults could easily convince us that “Santa Claus” was real and that reindeer could fly. As we grew older, we somehow misplaced the spontaneity and naturalness that was once within each of us - for many, the desire to dream and to use ones imagination greatly declines. We no longer know how to enjoy ourselves through the creative outlet of play and further more, we deny ourselves of this luxury by telling ourselves it is not ok to play…we do not have the time for such childish things. So, my hope and goal as a therapist is to help people re-discover their inner child and in doing so…learn to love, respect and understand themselves in order to find a better balance, meaning and purpose in living. As I have talked with, and counseled individuals’ I have found that oftentimes at the center of depression and fatigue is a lack of purpose, a lack of belonging, a lack of meaning. I have seen first hand through Inner Child Work - along with creative therapies such as art, poetry, music, and play - individuals are able to express their deepest thoughts and paint their deepest fears. I have also watched as individuals spill out and write, draw or paint their hopes, joys, and dreams. Through the process of Inner Child Work and creating comes healing, new ways of viewing life, renewed hope, love and trust. In conjunction with Inner Child Work - Art Journaling is very effective in creating positive trans-formations as it gives a voice to the individual’s internal dialogue and is one of my favorite tools to use in facilitating change. I find it deeply rewarding to be able to be a part of an individual’s journey – a deeply personal, unique process for each individual – a journey worth traveling.