Expressive Arts Therapy

What Is Expressive Arts Therapy?

Think, for a moment, about your favorite novel or movie. In all likelihood, the characters probably face a great deal of conflict, adversity, and suffering—and this is what makes their stories so engaging and worthy of telling.

In many ways, our lives are like the stories we read and watch. Our journeys are full of ups and downs and we go through many stages of development to get to where we are, just like our favorite characters. When we zoom out and view our lives from this perspective, it becomes easier to appreciate how far we’ve come and recognize the work that still needs to be done.

Expressive arts therapy is a way of doing therapy that engages the storytelling part of our brains. It utilizes a wide range of expressive tools for sharing stories, engaging creatively, and reflecting on insights and ideas. In expressive arts therapy, the creative process and the healing process become one—metaphors, narratives, and cultural references are used to help you articulate your experiences, explore difficult topics, and come up with creative solutions to your problems.

Expressive arts therapy can include visual art, drama, music, movement, and any other art form of your choice. It is very spontaneous, but also very intentional—the process is far different from merely drawing or coloring to relax and unwind. Expressive arts therapists choose materials and activities very carefully and deliberately, helping you find ways to enhance authentic expression and work through real-life emotional challenges.

What Makes Expressive Arts Therapy So Effective?

Expressive arts therapy is a “bottom-up” approach, since it doesn’t rely on cognition or the thinking part of the brain to sort through mental health issues. The emphasis is on creativity and playfulness, which use the mind in a different way than talking or remembering, allowing for change on a deeper, nonverbal level.

Expressive arts therapy is also an evidence-based approach backed by an abundance of research. All our therapists who practice it go through years of rigorous training to earn their credentials. Studies have generally found that expressive arts therapy can help clients increase self-awareness, cultivate greater acceptance, and enhance their psychological flexibility.

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Who Can Benefit From Expressive Arts Therapy?

Virtually anyone can benefit from expressive arts therapy, and you don’t have to consider yourself “artistic” or “creative” to participate in it. The point is not to create masterpieces of art, but to reflect on the creative process and use it as a means of healing, insight, and self-exploration.

As a result, this unique approach is ideal for people with aphasia, severe trauma, and other conditions that make verbal processing difficult or upsetting. It’s very helpful for children, since children often struggle to communicate their feelings, but it also works remarkably well with adults. Through expressive arts therapy, adults can reconnect with their playfulness, allowing them to feel lighter, see new perspectives, and experience joy again.

In short, expressive arts therapy can help people of all ages and backgrounds, even those who don’t describe themselves as “creative.” It gives them an opportunity to reflect on music, metaphors, and other arts to improve their self-awareness and get their feelings out.

How Does Expressive Arts Therapy Work?

At Harmony Harbor, expressive arts therapy is an organic, highly flexible process that’s individualized based on your needs and artistic preferences—there is no right or wrong way to do it. Oftentimes, your therapist might draw from expressive arts interventions while using approaches like DBT or Brainspotting, since expressive arts therapy plays very well in the sandbox with other therapeutic techniques.

The artistic activities you engage in will be specifically suited to your needs and preferences. For instance, if you’re struggling with anxiety and experiencing distressing emotions, you and your therapist may work with clay, since clay is a soothing and grounding material. Or if you’re having relationship troubles, you and your therapist might engage in drama therapy, using role-play to help you work through communication issues and practice responding in healthier ways.

As you engage in these creative activities, you and your therapist can explore questions like: What emotions came up during this process? Where did you feel those emotions in your body? Does this image or character remind you of anything in your own life? This process can help you make connections between your art and your life. You can learn to externalize the challenges you face, releasing painful emotions and shifting out of a defensive or threatened state and into a state of play, flow, and engagement.

In simpler terms, expressive arts therapy is about helping you play in the spirit of helping you heal. The work of expressive arts therapy can often be fun, embracing playfulness and giving you something hands-on to do with your emotions, but it’s also a deep and reflective process that can help you organically move toward healing and transformation.

Why Is Drama Therapy Central To Harmony Harbor’s Approach?

At Harmony Harbor, our expressive arts therapist, Kathleen Moye, specializes in drama therapy. Before becoming a licensed therapist, she worked as a professional theatrical performer and resident artist and director in schools and community theaters.

Now, Kathleen uses the elements of theater—character, storytelling, movement, props, and even costumes and makeup—to help clients approach challenges in new and novel ways. Her embodied interventions invite clients to imagine themselves in different scenes and scenarios, giving them the opportunity to express their feelings through a metaphor, script, sound, or movement.

All too often, traditional therapy methods encourage you to think through your feelings and analyze them rather than experience them. While this can shield you from having to face difficult feelings head-on, it makes it hard to achieve deeper healing, since you’re not engaging with experiences directly.

Embodied and creative approaches like drama therapy give you the space to explore your feelings from a different vantage point: neither overwhelming you nor keeping you in the bleachers. As a result, this approach enables you to engage in difficult experiences without feeling upset or distressed.

Experience Liberation Through The Power Of The Arts

Kathleen Moye is a Registered Drama Therapist who was trained at Lesley University in a multi-modality, Expressive Arts approach. She continued her education in trauma therapy with creative arts practices at Kint Institute and directed a theatrical production raising awareness for victims of human trafficking in 2016. In addition to providing expressive arts therapy in individual sessions, Kathleen is proud to offer monthly workshops for clients looking to make the creative arts part of their healing journey.

If you would like to get in touch with Kathleen and learn more about how expressive arts therapy can help you gain new insights and experience personal transformation, we encourage you to book an appointment with her!