About Art Therapy
Art therapy, also known as Art Psychotherapy, is based upon the relationship between the client, the Therapist and the artwork. Art Therapy is a registered profession, regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
Within a typical Art Therapy intervention there is potential space for all kinds of art forms and media, which are to help the client express their concerns through non-verbal communication.
I actively encourage creative, divergent and expressive thinking; I provide a vast array of materials to engage participants; from clay and painting to crafting materials and multisensory play.
​
I enjoy encouraging people to explore sensory materials. The use of our senses in Art Therapy can help to build an awareness of the self, the world we live in and how to manage that world from a personalized perspective.
If one has experienced trauma, this aspect of the work is highly important to both ground the person in reality whilst provding a creative language to express what words may not be able to.
​
​
Art Therapy can support people’s recovery in various ways.
In brief, Art therapy can help people to develop aspects of self-knowing, confidence building, self-regulation of emotions and problem solving. Using art materials has direct therapeutic benefit through how our senses integrate the activity we may be invested in.
Art Therapy primarily works differently to talking therapies in that it is not just a dyadic experience between client and therapist. In art Therapy the image is the third ‘party’ in the room, of which feelings can be projected on to, and one can express what cannot be exchanged in words.
Together the client (artist) and Therapist can be drawn to a shared view where the client is the author of their own narrative. Unlike some cognitive talking therapies, art therapy engages both sides of your brain together and can be a way to nurture our inner child who may have been hurt or stunted in some way in the past.
Through Art we can be any and all of our ages as the unconscious retains images spanning our entire lives. I believe very strongly that we are never one chronological age but instead all the ages we have ever been. Time is a global social construct connected with science but cannot define what should be expected of any person in relation to an ‘age’.
We are the only ones who can make ourselves better, and it starts with learning to love, nurture and forgive your ‘self’.
Read more about what art therapy is on the British association of art therapists’ website: https://www.baat.org/About-Art-Therapy
There is an article about the benefits to Arts in healthcare as represented in literature in the American Journal of Public Health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804629/