What’s the difference between art therapy and using art as therapy?

What’s the difference between art therapy and using art as therapy? Is there a difference?

Short answer - yes! There is some overlap, but they are different things.

Let’s start with using art as therapy.

Making art (or any kind of creative expression) is often an effective way to help us feel better.

It works in a similar way to going for a walk, reading a book, doing yoga - it helps us get out of our heads and relax, it helps us shift out of the state we’re in (for example, feeling anxious and cranky), and into a different state (feeling peaceful).

Making art gives us something to focus our attention on, and sustained attention on some kind of creative expression more often than not feels good (and when it doesn’t feel good, often it’s our inner critic having a say that’s the bit that doesn’t feel good).

It’s often satisfying to see the end result of our activity, too - a colouring in page completed, or a page of interesting scribbles that wasn’t there before.

Art therapy takes this further, by involving an art therapist.

An art therapist can help you harness some of the benefits of creative expression to find insight and understanding, to help change beliefs, and as a way to work through and process difficult emotions.

An art therapist can also suggest specific art activities that are designed to support and untangle the difficulties we’re facing on our journey through life.

For example, if you’re having a recurring dream, art therapy is a great way to explore the dream image and understand the messages it might have for you.

Or if you’re feeling stuck in a rut and you’re not sure how to figure out which direction to take, an art therapist could help you map out how you’re feeling now and find some possible paths to walk through spreading colours on the page.

The possibilities are pretty much endless!

How do you know which you need? Art as therapy, or art therapy?

If you’re wanting a way to relax, unwind and turn your brain off for a bit that doesn’t involve mindlessly scrolling - give art as therapy a go. Perhaps you could buy a colouring book, or give drawing Zen Tangles a go (lots of videos about how to do this on YouTube!).

If you’re wanting to understand yourself better, if you have a specific problem, if you’re dealing with difficult emotions like grief or loss or depression, or if you’d just like to have someone with you to ask questions and help you explore where you’re at - maybe art therapy is for you.

Art therapy can be done over Zoom, so if you’re curious and you’d like to find out more, get in touch!

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Art as therapy: body maps