Reflections on the Benefits of Expressive Arts Therapy

Incorporating expressive arts therapy in clinical psychotherapy offers the opportunity to reflect on living an authentic life. The artist client creates a personal metaphor in the creative act to shed new light on life. In the act of creating something there is an opportunity to externalize, to provide a new way of understanding things and examining them from a new perspective. This in turn offers the opportunity to alter that perspective and create change.

Art therapy involves exploring the deep mysteries of inner life. The resulting art creation offers a challenge to reflect upon our nature and our purpose. The foundation of the beauty of art therapy is the premise that each person is the creator of their own existence. As an artist client you are free to make whatever you wish and that no matter what you make, all creations have meaning. The process for making art is a metaphor for life itself therefore, and in the doing and the process of making there is an introduction into free will, the power of choice and change.

Art embraces contradictions and conflict, our deepest fears, loneliness, guilt, and honors the distressing disharmony of life, providing discoveries of success, empathy and encouragement for authentic relationship with self and others, and tending to self in a caring and nurturing manner for artful restoration.