Art therapy is a powerful mental health tool. During art therapy, people use a variety of art supplies to express themselves such as paint, pencils, markers, clay, collage, or pastels.
It helps people work through, understand, and learn from their life experiences using art-making. The creations made in art therapy are for expression not for artistic value.
Art therapy is not like traditional talk therapy because it bypasses language. It liberates feelings, emotions, and memories by moving them from inside oneself to outside through their creation.
Art therapists work in a way that respects the person’s unique lived experience and allows people to work on things in their own time and space.
There are many ways that doing art therapy helps people find a positive way forward. This is because it can help people:
- Work through issues and past traumas.
- Reframe negative messages and self-talk.
- Learn positive coping skills.
- Release emotions and feelings in a safe way.
- Lean into self-compassion, self-acceptance and self-understanding.
- Have space for grieving.