Expressive Arts Therapies
Creative expression has been a part of healing for centuries. In expressive arts therapy, that arts are used to achieve therapeutic goals . This could range from alleviating anxiety and depression to healing from trauma. The expressive arts therapies have a lot of research behind them. Best of all, you don’t need artistic skill to participate. You just need a willingness to try something new.
What is Expressive Arts Therapy?
Expressive Arts Therapy (EAT) is a holistic approach that combines two or more art therapies to support the whole person. This integrative model uses a variety of methods including writing, visual arts, drama, dance, and music to help people improve their mental health and well-being. During a therapy session, people work with a trained therapist who helps them explore their experience. Through the use of creative expression, they can understand their reactions, feelings, and experience from a different perspective that goes beyond the merely intellectual. The expressive art therapies can include any of the following creative art therapies :
Physical movement and dance is used to help people cope with stress, anxiety, depression. It can also be used to help heal relationships and improve overall mental health.
Drama therapy uses acting, improvisation, play, embodiment, projection, role, story, metaphor, and performance to help people make meaningful changes in their lives. A person can use dramatic techniques to set goals, express feelings, or solve problems.
This therapy uses the visual arts media and techniques such as drawing, painting, sculpting, or collage to work through emotions, thoughts, or experiences.
Music therapist can help people improve mood, ease anxiety and improve functioning by creating music and/ or listening to music.
This approach uses writing as a way to explore thoughts and emotions. For example, people create a poem, write a fictional story about their life, or write in a journal in order to understand their experience.
Why It’s Useful
Everybody can benefit from Expressive Art Therapy at some point in their lives. It’s most commonly used in groups but can also be used individually. Many people think that the expressive arts are just for kids, but actually it can be used for couples, adults, as well as families to support deep personal transformation. The expressive arts therapies can be particularly useful in cases of trauma, as depression, anxiety, and behavioral or developmental problems. That is because they can do deeper than words to tap into a person’s physiological state. Thus, the creative art therapies can access different parts of the brain and body than traditional talk therapies.
Most often the expressive art therapies can access the brain’s right hemisphere quite easily. A therapist can then work with a clients left and right brain in order to support integration. Some expressive art therapies can also access the deep reptilian brain. The reptilian brain controls basic regulation and stress states such as fight, flight and freeze.
Expressive arts therapy with kids
The expressive art therapies (EAT) can be a wonderful choice for both kids and teens. For example, if a child has a behavioral issue, an expressive arts therapist can use music, movement, or puppet work to help address this issue. The therapist observes the child’s processes, behavior, and impulses, and then engages the child through play and creative expression. They can then, talk about their experience or explore non-verbal alternatives to the problematic behavior.
Children who struggle with big emotions can paint, act, dance, draw, or write these emotions first before attempting to express them verbally. Kids who have been hospitalized or are struggling with a medical condition can also benefit. For many kids and teens this is a much more effective and also fun way of learning how to process thoughts, feelings and experience. This approach can be extremely helpful for children who may not yet have the ability to describe what they are thinking or feeling in words.
Expressive arts therapy with adults
Adults of all ages can benefit from EAT. Research shows that EAT can help improve cognitive function as well as reduce anxiety in older adults. Creative methods can range from journal writing to storytelling and making visual life maps or body maps. An expressive art therapy session can also incorporate music, literature, poetry, videos, or memory books. From an existential perspective, the art therapies can help older clients review and make meaning of their lives. It can help them feel more connected to themselves in a deeper way and also to others. The creative process can also reveal gifts or latent talents, and also release pent-up emotions through expression.
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Connect with a highly trained Expressive Arts Therapist by contacting our office (314) 827-5448 or email us at admin@danceofchange.com.
We are located in St Louis, Missouri and serve people in the following communities: Webster Groves, Kirkwood, Crestwood, Maplewood, Brentwood, Rockhill, Richmond Heights, Clayton, Shrewsbury, Ladue, Central West End and the surrounding areas.