What are Expressive Art Therapies?
Learn how Expressive Arts Therapies can help you find more confidence in ability to express yourself, meaningful relationships, and feeling wonderfully good enough as you are.
You’ve wanted to relax more, get into an activity you enjoy, but reality sets in, and work, relationship, and kids floats across your mind. It’s like your brain finds all the reasons you don’t have time for yourself. For some reason, you think it’s either relationships or the ‘me time. What if you can have both meaningful relationships and time to rest, express your creativity, and be your authentic self?
The excellent news is that you can both! Your brain is wired to scan for all the negative possibilities in your surroundings. You were made to survive in this world, which is your brain’s way of helping you out! Your survival brain is handy, but you’re not being chased by a lion, except if your kid is pretending to be a big lion chasing you around the house. When you think of something creative, your brain automatically makes excuses, leaving you feeling stuck. You’re not alone! So many women desire more time to write, paint, craft, do pottery, etc., but feel constrained by other responsibilities.
It’s almost like you carry the whole world on your shoulders!
It doesn’t have to be so difficult. I can help you lift those burdens off and allow you to take a deep breathe.
Your brain and nervous system work together like a boat and an oar. Your brain is the boat moving along, and your nervous system is submerged in the water. Let’s say some waves are coming, your oars will feel them first, and then the boat will naturally move where the oars direct it. When your nervous system is running high, worrying about the project at work, what to feed your kids, and the last time you and your husband had some connection time, it’s hard to get your brain to stop. Your brain is naturally going where your nervous system is taking it.
Expressive Arts Therapies help you learn how to calm down your nervous system.
You can in your own time allow your brain to explore, express, and play in a calm, compassionate, supportive environment.
Why is calming down, exploring, and playing important? You can make clear decisions, find confidence, and set boundaries that nurture yourself and others. The most important relationship you will have in your life is with yourself. It’s okay to invest and take time for yourself. Let’s demystify Expressive Art Therapies. People hear the term here and there, but it’s not mainstream and is something you hear about daily. The first thing you hear when you hear expressive arts therapies is, “I’m not an artist and cannot do it.” Let’s get one thing straight. You do not have to be an artist to play with the Expressive Arts therapy and heal. You don’t. I cannot reiterate this enough. Expressive Arts Therapies provide you the space to explore your unique expression, preferred way of communicating, challenges, blockages, and connect with more joy in your life.
Many of my clients get anxious at first when I mention utilizing some express arts therapy to help them process feelings of being stuck or blocks they’re experiencing. That’s common and okay. Not every day, your art and movement get center stage, and you've listened to them on many levels. Engaging in the arts allows you to play, explore, expand, and grow. Many of my clients had a childhood where they had to be emotionally mature and carry a lot of emotional labor. Often these clients had to grow up quickly.
You learned to put learning and experiment on the sideline to deal with the next emotion of people in the family and deal with dad‘s anger or mom’s debilitating depression.
I invite you to imagine what a child does when they create, play, and enjoy themselves?
Do they stop analyzing it? Do they throw it out and say it’s not good enough? Do they say no, I’m not good at it, I’m never going to do this again? I bet nuts! When kids are in flow, they play, explore, and don’t care if the person is purple, yellow, or turquoise. To them, they are discussing and learning about themselves. So much of our learning and ways of understanding the world are through play and relaxing enjoyment of an activity. And the good old perfectionist parts of yourself don’t feel safe to play. It becomes a scary thing to do.
What are Expressive Arts?
Let’s dive in a little deeper. I can talk about this every day, every minute of the day! Yet, I’m going to spare you that rant. Expressive Art Therapy is a form of healing therapy that incorporates different art modalities such as painting, clay, movement, drumming, drawing, collaging, pastels, video, etc. to help you learn to calm down your nervous system, increase self-awareness, help playfulness, help process traumatic cycles stuck in your experience. In my experience, expressive arts and creativity have become a way of life. Our culture prefers the left brain activity such as logic, thinking, and strategic planning. These gifts are remarkable and necessary for you to thrive in this world. Yet, expressive arts therapies is a modality that focuses on using different art modalities such as painting, sculpting, clay work, poetry, writing, movement, and sound) to help express and work through complicated feelings, make meaning, and connect with your values.
Let’s look at what you can expect during an expressive arts therapy process.
We first start with completing an intake-questions about your life, your experiences, and what brings you to therapy at this time. You and I will discuss your goals and outline what you can expect in our time together. If you’d like to stop the activity and move to talk therapy, I’ll stop, and we’ll take time to talk about what is happening for you in the movement. You’re in the driver's seat, and I’m a supportive guide.
Once you decide what you’d like to work on, I’ll ask you to bring in art materials you feel comfortable with. Some women chose crayons, markers, and pastels, or some brought in cut-out pictures to help express how they were feeling. I don’t interpret your creations and NEVER judge them because that is NOT the point. We’ll bring out curiosity to your creations, and I will be curious about the colors, partners, and other elements in your creation. I might invite you to move, write words, or move into another art form to continue the process.
Many clients describe the experience as transformation. They share that they feel heard and seen on many levels, they are clear on their purpose, can make choices with confidence, and the most significant gift to themselves is knowing who they are, connecting with a deep part of them, and being able to share that with themselves and the people they love!
Soul Glue Reflections:
I invite you to look at these questions. I think about them for a while.
What is holding you back from allowing yourself to play, to nurture that little part of you that wanted to experiment and play but had to be mature? What would happen if you allowed yourself to play and explore more?
What is your profession holding in place for you?
What fear is holding are you back from exploring and playing?
