Towards the end of the Summer, I completed a course on Udemy, a global leading learning marketplace, which has an incredible range of courses available at affordable prices. It is a legitimate company designed to enhance career skills. Whilst the company themselves aren’t an accredited institution, there are few courses which allow you to receive CPD points (These are great if you need to build up your CPD hours!). The course I chose to do was Therapeutic Art Life Coaching taught by three leading professionals, Joeel and Natalie Rivera, and Victoria Hawkins, who are ‘experts in the fields of psychology and therapy’ at Transformation Academy.

With their course, they offer students who complete the course an official ‘life coach certification’ from Transformation Academy. They also state: This course is also accredited by internationally recognized Continuing Professional Development Standards Agency (Provider No: 50134), and 10 CPD or CEU credits are available upon request. And DISCLAIMER: The content in this course is provided for educational purposes only. This course has not been accredited by any state, national, international accreditation association or educational board. All certificates issued by Transformation Academy are certified by Transformation Services, Inc. only. No certificate or item sold on this website is intended to duplicate or bear a resemblance to that of any items issued by a state or federal governmental agency or any other academic organization or society.

I wanted to work through this course for not only my own understanding, but to help with journal therapy, coaching and learn therapeutic art techniques. I have seen on social media platforms where the course is advertised, the comments about being disingenuous, and that it isn’t a “real” qualification and is sold as if you could start up your own business in Art Therapy. However, this is not the case. It is even discussed at the beginning of the course how this is based on therapeutic art techniques which can be used in a coaching scenario to support clients challenge their thoughts and beliefs, use affirmations to increase their confidence and use visualisation techniques to rewire the brain (I mentioned earlier about the power of journal therapy and expressive writing, and this too works in the exact way!)

The course doesn’t make you an Art Therapist, it highlights the techniques you can use in sessions with clients, and specifically mentions that if someone has mental health challenges, as a professional life coach, you are obligated to refer them to an appropriate, licensed professional.

It reminds me of what we learnt in our first year of CCM, that coaching is coaching. You’re not a health care provider or therapist, and you should never provide medical advice or diagnosis, and even practice therapy. Coaches are there to coach and act as a facilitator of their client’s self-reflection and decision making, future planning and guiding for life changes. We learn there are many similarities between the two, such as using theoretical and practical frameworks in order to facilitate positive change, but there are so many legal requirements for practicing therapy. Instead, coaches should consider the ethics and standards required of coaching, and whilst there are no ‘official legal ethical guidelines’, there are industry standards and some international coaching code of ethics such as the ‘International Coaching Federation’, and ‘Association for Coaching’ (please correct me if I am wrong here and signpost me to resources!)

So, when I completed this course over a few weeks (despite the full course having 42 ‘lectures’ and 3.5 total video hours!), I was really pleased with my persistence to stick with it.

I aim to use my learnings within my final year at CCCU, as well as enhance my skillset for a career or self-employed career. I have some ideas up my sleeve about Therapeutic Journaling and Art Techniques, and to be able to combine them into something for everyone would be really nice.

As with most of my little projects, I say – Watch this space!