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Senior Lawyer Jennifer Lim: Art Therapy Helps Others and Self
07 Feb 2021
On February 7, 2021 (Sunday), an article published on Shin Min Daily News read “Senior Lawyer Jennifer Lim: Art Therapy Helps Others and Self”.
This senior lawyer uses art therapy and counseling to interact with a diverse group of people and provide listening ears to different voices, and understands that “by viewing issues with breadth and depth, and adjust one’s own attitude”, can things be easily resolved easily”.
Jennifer Lim, a consultant at Infinitus Law Corporation, has been in the industry for 28 years. In her 25th year, she felt that she did not know enough about people, so she went to study for a master’s degree in art therapy.
“In the past few years, I have had the opportunity to interact with different people, such as friends with dementia, friends with special needs, friends with autism, etc. I had less contact with such people before.”
She shared that the time outside of her legal work is used for counseling and art therapy, and during counseling, she will naturally encounter people with a bad mood. In addition to allowing those in need of counseling to speak out, they must also understand these people and the state of their living environment.
“When we look at the breadth and depth of issues and adjust our attitude, many things can be resolved.”
Helping others can also help herself. Jennifer Lim will never forget when she counseled an acquaintance who her friend’s friend, who was of the same age and background, but suffers from serious depression and even suicidal tendencies. At that time, in order to understand what caused her suffering and troubles, she used mind mapping to write down her emotions and experiences on a piece of mahjong paper and through writing, illustrating, and then analyzing to solve the problems one by one.
“We moved around the mahjong paper, as if we were walking through her life journey again. I am grateful for the opportunity to help her because she also helped me because of this incident. After I got home, I started to think about my life and did a mindmap and looked back on my life. It was a win-win situation to me.”
Helping Migrant Workers with Art Therapy during the Pandemic
Jennifer Lim said that before the pandemic, she had chances to use art therapy to help foreign workers and get to know their lives and thoughts up close.
Later, when the pandemic broke out, Jennifer Lim also understood the hardships these foreign workers were facing. So, with 6 other friends who are also involved in art therapy, they bought painting materials and contacted the migrant workers’ dormitory operators, and asked them for help in allowing the migrant workers to express their feelings through painting, like letting them draw pictures on postcards and send news of their well-being to their family members far away. About six to seven hundred migrant workers benefited from their help.
Jennfier Lim believes that studying art therapy has made her a lawyer who is more analytical and understands the emotions of people. In addition, being able to interact with different people has opened her eyes and she has benefited a lot.