Termination Paintings

Termination is what the end of a therapeutic relationship is called, but a lot of times (it seems) it becomes the word for the end of any relationship. And the end of a relationship a lot of times involves exchanging gifts that show that you recognize your relationship and value it.

For my termination pieces for the staff at my internship site, I made these paintings (they're all about 2x4"). I then used a directive that I used in my class: I laid the paintings out on the floor and asked people to guess who they belonged to and why. This exercise encourages people to talk about each others' strengths and what they value in their relationships, so it's not just about me but it's about everyone.

In the future when I have a long term group, I'd like to do something like this where everyone makes pieces for other people and then we all try to group them together or something like that. It's really neat. But I think it would be even better if there were multiple perspectives - these were about my relationships with the staff, but their relationships with each other are different, so they notice different things than I do.












Each one represents my relationship with that person and something I noticed about them. :)