January 2024 - Meme/GIF Wheel of Emotions Therapeutic Art Making Intervention

Happy New Year! How the heck are we in 2024 already?! This month’s intervention was inspired by a client of mine. We were working together and talking about her reaction to a situation and she shared in frustration that her emotion wheel didn’t capture how she was feeling and that she wanted to show me a GIF to better express her emotion. This led to us coming up with the idea to make her a GIF/Meme wheel! It was so fun to create, she LOVED it, and I loved it so much I just had to share it in the intervention library.

Please note, If you do take any photos of client’s art work, make sure you have a consent form signed for this. I have a Consent to Photograph Artwork Created in Therapy Sessions Form in my products if you need one for your practice. Even with therapeutic art making, it is ethically necessary to have this consent form signed. Also make sure to remove any identifying information from any art work before photographing it, such as names or signatures.

I offer personalized intervention ideas in the clinical consultation and supervision I provide as well! When I work one on one with clinicians, I love being able to create specific interventions tailored to each client and their presenting concerns. Feel free to reach out with any questions to see if creative supervision and consultation would be a good fit for you and your practice!

Process Video:

Age range: 8+

Diagnosis: Any

Supplies Needed:

• Canva (free or paid versions!)

Uses: This is a great way for clients to further express their emotions in a deeper, more visual way

Artistic skills needed: None!

Instructions:

1. To use this wheel, you can find it on Canva here. All you have to do is make a copy of it and then you can swap out the GIFs!

   • You are welcome to share this with clients if they want to swap out or input the GIFs themselves, but please make sure you make a copy of your own first and then share your copy with them

   • You are also welcome on your version to change out the background color, font, or any other details!

2. I did my best with my client to follow the format of an emotion wheel where the center emotions are basic and then the outer wheel is deeper and more complex variations of those emotions but you can really do it however you want to!

3. Canva has GIFY integrated into the app itself on the left in the apps section (see the process video if you need a visual!) but I have heard some feedback that not all the GIFs there are available on the free version

   • If you can’t find the GIFs you are looking for directly on Canva, or if they aren’t on the free version, you can go to this website and find and download pretty much any GIF you want! From there all you do is upload the GIF you saved to your device and you can pop it into the frames on the GIF wheel

4. With the way the frames are made, you will have to rotate and crop the GIFs when you put them in. You can check out the process video to see how I did this or you can double click on the frame/GIF and you can crop it there and use the rotate tool to have it facing the correct way

5. Once you have swapped out all of the GIFs you/your client wants, you can have them download it as a video file and the GIFs will play when they look at it!

Intervention Example

*A note about examples: Please be careful about sharing an example of the intervention with your client. When a client sees a full example, it can unintentionally influence what they are making and may skew what they are presenting in their art making.