Art Therapy: Create To Recover

And that brings us back to the aforementioned mask project. That client explored her perfectionism through group and individual therapy, worked the magic of the 12-steps on it, and is proud to say that she now finds both growth and comfort in imperfection. It’s also what makes her a true believer in the transformative properties of creative expression art therapy for addiction in all its manifestations. Painting and creating other forms of art allows Fish to practice what mental health professionals would call mindfulness. When Fish is creating, she’s not thinking about the past, or planning out the week or worrying about the future. Art therapy in recovery is not limited to any age group or socioeconomic class.

Watercolor Your Emotions

• If stress has you anxious, tense and worried, you might try meditation.
• Celander said she’s also watched patients soothe themselves through art during moments of anxiety.
• For more information, don’t forget to download our three Positive CBT Exercises for free.
• Art therapy is designed to complement other recovery services like talk therapy, medication management, and support groups.
• Watercolor, in general, creates soft, beautiful pieces of color that evoke all sorts of emotions.
• Meanwhile, trust an electronic health record like TenEleven to manage the day-to-day of your organization’s administrative duties.
• These can be as simple as notes on scraps of paper that mention goals the person wants to achieve or affirmations that evoke positive emotions.

Art therapy provides a non-verbal way to express pain, anxiety, or other emotional issues. It offers a way to work through tough issues that can’t be put into words https://ecosoberhouse.com/ or written down. Art therapy can also teach and develop skills needed to improve mental health such as introspection, self-awareness, and coping methods.

How Can Art Therapy Help with Trauma?

If you’re creating a self-care box, have the participants add items that represent to them the idea of support and self-help. Give them a moment to reflect on what activities, people, or things help them feel good. These can be as simple as notes on scraps of paper that mention goals the person wants to achieve or affirmations that evoke positive emotions.

Color your feelings

Access to nature in either a garden or park is also preferable (Atkins & Snyder, 2017), as it’s much easier to slow down in nature than in a busy urban setting. This video trailer for the book Video and Filmmaking as Psychotherapy (Cohen et al., 2016) gives a taste of how filmmaking is being used in psychotherapy with veterans to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Filmmaking is another powerful expressive art form that is now available to most of us, given we can all make videos with our smartphones and edit them with various low-cost or free video-editing apps online. Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive CBT Exercises for free. These science-based exercises will provide you with detailed insight into Positive CBT and give you the tools to apply it in your therapy or coaching. She performed in front of a live audience without spontaneously combusting, and at that very moment she created a new, sober frame of reference in her chosen art form.

As individuals are on the road to recovery, they may have a lot of gratitude toward others who have helped them get to where they are today. Creating thank you cards is a great way to show appreciation and support positive feelings and an optimistic mind. Negative, judgmental thoughts can cloud the mind, creating a harsh environment in an individual’s head and hindering recovery. Creating a collage of “words to live by” helps these individuals identify who they are and understand the core values they want to live by. A “words to live by” collage can be created individually or in a group setting. This is another reason Lurie is a proponent of art therapy.

Can Art Therapy Treat Addiction?

This activity was created for people who struggle with eating disorders or have body image problems. People with these conditions often create masks to hide behind that can operate as distractions from other issues, keep others from seeing their suffering, or keep them from seeing their own dysfunction. Enhance wellbeing with these free, science-based exercises that draw on the latest insights from positive psychology. It’s crucial when working with teens to create coping strategies that they can come back over to time and let them know that their ideas, feelings, and values will change with experience. Young children often rely on their limited language skills to express complex thoughts and emotions.

Positive outcomes during addiction treatment include:

However, art therapy alone isn’t enough to treat drug and alcohol addiction. In the likeness of a geographic map, create a map of your inner world. To do this, think about what feelings, states prevail in you (“ocean of love”, or “mountain of courage”). Leave the “undiscovered islands” to discover new qualities.