Chiron Art Therapy, Maggi Colwell, Atr-Bc

10/31/2025

I’m vocal about how dubious I am about the overuse of IFS.

It takes a few ideas from Jungian psychology and manualizes it. There is a reason the training I’m doing in Zurich is going to take me at least 6 years. 6 years on top of 4 years undergrad, 2 years grad school and 3 years post graduate supervision.

For those with fragile mental states it’s grounding and ego strengthening we do, not imaginative internal work.

Anything that gets that popular is probably not being talked out accurately on TikTok, Reddit, or wherever it gets discussed in the general conversation.

So frustrating!

In recent years, Internal Family Systems has exploded in popularity. IFS, which was conceived by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s, is centered around the idea that each individual has multiple selves, known as parts. Patients will single out parts, locate them in their bodies, and engage them in conversation to help relieve their emotional burdens.

TikTok is flooded with numerous videos mentioning IFS, more than 45,000 mental-health practitioners in the Psychology Today database offer it as a treatment, and celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Elizabeth Gilbert have praised the practice.

The scientific community takes a much less enthusiastic view of the practice.

A growing number of psychiatrists and psychologists are emerging with urgent warnings about the therapy, casting IFS as a simplistic allegory and, at the worst, a dangerous pseudoscience. While some patients find relief through IFS, critics argue that it’s likely owing to the way it shifts responsibility for one’s actions onto another persona or the fact that it recycles aspects of traditional talk therapy that are, in fact, helpful.

For patients with vulnerabilities like complex PTSD, disordered eating, or psychosis — many of the very people IFS practitioners are taught to treat — the therapy could destabilize already fragile mental states.

Read Rachel Corbett’s full report on the widely popular treatment that some patients say have destroyed their lives: https://nymag.visitlink.me/l-u20g

10/30/2025

In this talk, I explore Saturn as an archetype — not simply as the “Great Malefic” or planet of limitation, but as the energy of containment, form, and matur...

10/28/2025

Are you feeling stuck in your creative pursuits? Your dreams may hold the key to unlocking your deepest desires and helping you find inspiration again. Discover how to use dream work to break free from creative ruts and explore your inner world. Learn practical techniques for interpreting and reflecting on your dreams in our latest blog post. Book a dream session to delve deeper into your subconscious and find a path to a more fulfilling life.

10/27/2025

Resistance can be an indicator that you’re approaching unknown territory.

It can also be in response to something that’s important when you are moving into a place that matters

With instinctual response to new situation is a protective response from your ego

This means anxiety isn’t necessarily something that’s bad that you want to run away from.

It can be saying “this is important and I need more energy for it.

because excitement and anxiety are the same frequency. For me often when I have resistance to something I think I want to do it’s an internal part of me asking me to surrender so that I can take care of my body that I have another self-care type of need that needs to take precedence over whatever goal activity or chore I think I wanna get done.

If you're tired of feeling stuck, of the blocks you come across, of feeling like you're fighting against yourself, it's time to start analysis. Schedule a consultation with me, link in the bio.

10/27/2025

An Invitation to Listen Differently
The antidote to dissociation.

When we slow down enough to listen, the body begins to speak through sensations, restlessness, tension, or the image that drifts in before sleep. These are the whispers of the unconscious.

You don’t have to interpret them right away. Just notice. The ache in the chest, the flutter in the stomach, the dream that will not leave you alone. Each carries a symbol, an energy, a message.

Art can help you listen. When we draw, paint, or move color across a page, the hands bypass the intellect and give shape to what words cannot hold. It is less about making something beautiful and more about being in dialogue with what is alive inside you.

That is what we explore together in the Tuesday Tune-Ins. Grounding, sensing, noticing, and creating. It is a space to experience rather than explain, to let the unconscious show its symbols in color, movement, and image.

If this resonates, you can join my weekly zooms by signing up for my newsletter here:

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10/23/2025

I have one opening in the Thursday morning art therapy group beginning October 30th in Northwest Columbus.

This is a closed 8-week clinical group for women 40+ with histories of childhood trauma and complex PTSD. Most members use this group to supplement their individual therapy. It offers a structured space to work with nervous system regulation, boundaries, emotional processing, and creative expression through art-making.

No art experience is needed.

If you or someone you work with could benefit from a small, supportive group setting with a trauma-informed focus, you can learn more here:
👉 columbusarttherapy.com/art-therapy-group-in-columbus/

10/23/2025

Active imagination is one of Jung’s most powerful methods for connecting with the unconscious through image, feeling, and imagination.In this talk, art thera...

10/21/2025

Maggi Colwell from Chiron Art Therapy explores the profound connection between art, dreams, and Jungian theory in therapy practice. Discover how embracing th...

10/20/2025

Are you tired of only short-term solutions to mental health concerns? Our latest blog discusses how depth-oriented therapy can help you navigate through different parts of your internal world to find optimal functioning and wellness.

10/17/2025

As the days grow shorter and the leaves fall, we’re invited to turn inward.

This season can stir grief or highlight some sort of lack. But there's also a deep, quiet richness waiting beneath it all. Your body remembers how to listen for that small, yearning voice within.

Therapy with me isn’t something I can explain. It’s something we experience together. It’s presence. It’s listening to the body and the unconscious. Each person’s journey looks different.

I’m accepting a few new clients this fall. If you feel the call to explore your own inner descent, let’s talk.

10/16/2025

In this talk, Maggi Colwell, explores how Jung’s ideas of psychological functions and polarities can inform the process of art therapy.Rather than fixed pers...

10/16/2025

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how important it is to just be real in the work I share, to show up fully, as a human being, not a blank slate.

We talk a lot in my training in Switzerland about how the work happens when the therapist does their internal work, and brings that healing and change into the archetypal field between the therapist and client.

As an art therapist, I do this work too: dialoguing with images, sitting with symbols, and learning from what the unconscious brings forward.

In last week’s Tuesday Tune-In, we explored what it means to dialogue with your images and how art can become a living conversation with your inner world.

That full talk will be up on YouTube next Wednesday. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/

Next Tuesday, we’ll be diving into Saturn and Archetypal Containers — exploring the ways form, structure, and limits actually hold us so that we can grow.

If you’ve been curious about the Tune-Ins, this is a good one to join.
They’re an open, reflective space — and you’re welcome to invite friends who love symbolism, dreams, and depth work too.

Sign up here: https://chironarttherapy.myflodesk.com/newsletter