Featured Art Therapist: Emily Reim Ifrach

Liberation for all minoritized people! 
We are celebrating National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month by featuring Art Therapists who work in the name of Social Justice and Liberation.



Meet Featured Social Justice Art Therapist,
Emily A Reim Ifrach!

Emily A Reim Ifrach,
MAAT, CEDCAT, REAT, ATR-BC, LPC, NCC

Watertown & New Haven, CT

Artache LLC | www.artachellc.com  |  artachellc@gmail.com

Lotus Counseling of Connecticut | www.lotuscounselingct.com  |  emily@lotuscounselingct.com

Tell us about your work!

I work for Lotus Counseling of Connecticut. We are a private practice of trauma-informed therapists whose group goal is to increase awareness about trauma, trauma treatment, and mental health. Our focus is to make quality mental health care accessible to all people across all ages, socio-economic status, races, religions, sexual orientations and identities.

My personal focus is on working with clients diagnosed with eating disorders and complex trauma. I also have my own small private practice where I supervise new art therapists and mental health counselors.

What does social justice mean to you?

For me social justice is about recognizing the inequalities in our society and working toward finding solutions or finding a voice to express one's personal reaction to those inequalities. Social justice is about more than recognizing my white privilege or allying myself with the disenfranchised; it is about critically examining our social and political structures and participating in ways to make change.

How do you center social justice and liberation in your work?

I bring a social justice framework to many of my clients, examining how societal "norms" for gender and gender identity as well as current political policies greatly affect self-esteem, self-worth, and feelings of fear, anxiety, and inadequacies that feed and fuel eating disorders. When a client is triggered by our current political administration, we process what the administration represents and how they can use their voice, through art, to feel like they're making an impact. Many of my clients with histories of sexual assault and abuse have found our current administration not only triggering but also hopeless. They see someone who has gotten away with sexual assault, abuse, and violence without any repercussions, which mirrors their own personal experience.  We discuss ways they can express their feelings such as creating art in public, participating in public art shows, sending artwork to the president, and doing some introspective work on systemic trauma and how to cope and thive an a traumatic society.

As part of this Lotus Counseling of Connecticut held a Day of Action for Families Belong Together on Saturday June 30th. All community members were invited to join donation based yoga and mindfulness meditation and participate in public art making. Participants were given the opportunity to create prayer flags sending their own messages to President and to create postcards with messages and letters which will be sent to the white house. Participants were also given the opportunity to register to vote and read books on systemic trauma and trauma treatment.  

Artwork created during Lotus Counseling of Connecticut's Day of Action for Families Belong Together.

Community members creating art during Lotus Counseling of Connecticut's Day of Action for Families Belong Together.