What art therapy is and isn’t — spoiler alert: NO art skills necessary!

Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that draws upon a number of creative and expressive modalities such as

painting, drawing, sculpture, clay work, poetry, drama, dance, music, and sand play (to name just a few).

Conventional therapy usually requires the client to verbalize the issue at hand, which often leads to telling-the-story-as-it-always-has-been-told.

This can narrow the possibility of gaining insight and makes it harder to allow for new possibilities or for solutions to be developed.

Enter Art Therapy!

By creating a tangible representation of any given situation (by drawing, sculpting or acting it out in a sand tray for instance), the client is engaging a completely different area of the brain, which bypasses the cognitive, “already-always-known” of his or her old stories and allows for new insights to be gained.

In the therapeutic context, this stage in the session represents an important turning point: The client has discovered information they were previously unaware of (also called “privileging the unconscious”). The therapist now moves from witnessing the client’s story towards helping the client develop a strategy to process, integrate and possibly (not always) act on the new insights gained in his or her life.

Art therapy is particularly effective when for whatever reason the client is unable to talk about a situation or issue. The art will do the talking, when the client can’t.

Art Therapists are trained to

• use the art-making processes, symbols, images and rituals to invoke new insights in the client
• privilege the unconscious
• choose the correct medium
• focus on the process not the product
• enable their clients to “tell their story in a new way”

Some people may feel intimidated by the word “art”, assuming (erroneously) that one has to have artistic talent, to be able to draw and paint and sculpt in order to benefit from art therapy.

Nothing could be further from the truth: Absolutely NO ART SKILLS are necessary.

What is created in the session is an expression of the client’s experience.

Whether that looks like a “Picasso” masterpiece or your 4-year old niece’s stick figure drawing has no bearing on the meaning the piece holds for the client or the insights that they can gain from it.

Another important fact to remember:

An art therapist will not interpret (or judge!) a client’s work.

We are trained to support the client in finding their own insights and meaning. We then work WITH the client to integrate those insights, to take them outside of the protected space of the therapy room and to ground them in the real world of their daily lives.

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I’m an art therapist who reads archetypes, astrology and Tarot. I work with people who are stuck or undecided about this question: What is my Next Right Action?

Book a session with me here: www.karinvolppgardela.com and use code FIRST for a 20% discount on your first session.