Make a Theraputic Collage

Collages can be created for many reasons or many uses and with many and varied objects, pictures or fabrics. They can adorn our walls, become abstract art or can become the map of our lives revealing the dreams and aspirations of our youth that we still yearn for that never came true.

Creating a Collage for therapy can release our inner longings, missing dreams, or pain of having to accept a life much different than we had once yearned for or aspired to become.

We had visions of becoming an artist, a poet, an author or world traveler. We watched a movie and yearned to be the actress that everyone adored until we married and our dreams gave way to becoming the best wife and mother possible while our dreams and aspirations seemed to slowly fade away.

Each day seems to be a carbon copy of the previous until one day we wonder where ''our'' dreams went to. What happened to the person that we once wanted to become and what happened to the life we had envisioned but never attained.

Therapeutic Collages can help us all open up our creative and artistic sides to create a sense of peace or to define who we are, and who we were, as opposed to what we are at this moment.

Being creative is not only for children or young adults. It is also not only for the infirmed or the very old. Creativity comes in many forms.

We can write a story, paint a picture or stitch and frame a canvas. Learning who we are now and what our aims and goals were when we were younger can help us be happier and more content adults. Somehow we got lost along the way and feel that we gave up our identities and our dreams to please others.

Building a collage can help bring us back to the reality of what we want and where we wanted to go, how we wanted to look and to compare it with the now and then. Look through various magazines, and cut out pictures. Look for pictures that reveal who you are or who you think you are or what you would like to be.

Cut out pictures of people you admire; their hair styles, hair coloring, size and demeanor. Find pictures of what you look like now and how you had wanted to look. Do not look at prices or costs but instead select a house, an apartment, a boat, or a yacht you feel you would ''love to have''and then find a picture of where you live now.

Find a picture of a man you wished you wished you had married or even a dress you love. Perhaps a school you wished you could gone to or a job you never got and always wanted.

Be truthful and honest remembering that this is something you are doing just for yourself. Take your time as part of the therapy is looking, searching, and trying to find the person you seemed to have lost in the process of growing up.

Do not look with any particular image in mind. Keep turning the pages until you say to yourself..."Oh wow! I wish I looked like this" - then cut it out and save it. Be selective, be honest, and look from your heart and not your mind.

While searching, bring out the inner child within who had dreamed big dreams, and allow yourself to be guided from your imagination and memories of your past yearnings.

Place the pictures on a large cardboard and format it before pasting. This is your life you are pasting so keep that in mind when you organize the pictures.

By creating a collage of what you had wanted to be, you might find that you have been that person after all and that the imaginary person you are now making up is much like you are now.

Once that realization sets in the unrest and turmoil within you, the anger you might feel at yourself for not being what you had wanted to be, might cease, and you can be a happier and more content person.

Understand that even if you did not learn anything, creating a collage is fun and enjoyable and an inexpensive past time to remove you from the stresses of your everyday life.