Why does art heal?

I came across a quote from Gabor Maté (a physician with a particular interest in and much wisdom around trauma), that speaks to why art can be so healing:

“Well, the thing about trauma is that people suppress a lot of their feelings, a lot of their experiences, and art by definition is the opposite of suppression, it’s expression. Instead of pushing it down, you get it out.

Now, when that’s done consciously, when there’s conscious expression, that’s where the healing takes place. And that conscious expression, that conscious pushing it out, can be verbal, it can be emotional, but it surely can be facilitated by artistic expression, which bypasses the intellect and comes right from the emotional, gut level.

Sometimes people create art and don’t even know where it came from, but it came from some deep place inside themselves. And if they can do that consciously, then it’s a form of therapy. Not that it’s designed that way, but it can have that effect. People can also express art unconsciously, and to the extent that it stays unconscious it’s not going to be very healing.

So it has to be artistic expression, with some degree of consciousness.”

This is part of why art therapy is effective - we’re creating art as a way of consciously expressing some of the things we perhaps haven’t looked at, perhaps haven’t been able to feel, in a way that feels manageable. We’re using a page as a container to put some of the internal stuff, so we can look at it with new eyes in new ways.

If you’d like to experience this for yourself, perhaps you’d like to come to an art journal workshop - I have a few coming up. Click here to check out my workshops page for what’s current.

Or if you’d prefer 1:1 art therapy sessions, these are available both in person and over Zoom. Click here to get in touch about those!