Common Questions about Art Therapy

What is Art Therapy?

Art therapy is an integrative mental health profession that enriches the lives of individuals, families, and communities through active art-making, creative process, applied psychological theory, and human experience within a psychotherapeutic relationship. Put simply: it uses the creative process of making art to improve a person’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

Our Art Therapist is Emily Wright, MS Provisional Registered Art Therapist (ATR-P)" and "Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-230).

How does art therapy work?

1.Bypasses the Language Barrier

When we experience stress, depression, or trauma, those feelings are often stored as sensory fragments or raw emotions, not as coherent sentences. The language centers of the brain (typically in the left hemisphere) can struggle to translate these intense feelings into words.

Art therapy activates the brain's sensory and emotional processing centers (often associated with the right hemisphere). This allows a person to express exactly how they feel using colors, shapes, and textures, effectively bypassing the need to find the "right words."

2.Kinesthetic Regulation/ Somatic Regulation

The physical act of making art directly impacts the autonomic nervous system.

• Soothing: Repetitive motions, like coloring, knitting, or molding soft clay, can lower heart rates, reduce cortisol (the stress hormone), and calm an overactive nervous system.

• Releasing: More resistant materials, like thick paints or hard clay, can help clients safely release pent-up anger or frustration through physical effort.

3.Do I have to be good at art?

Absolutely not. You do not need an ounce of artistic skill, talent, or previous experience to benefit from art therapy. Art therapy is meant to engage in the above benefits, not being amazing at it!

4.Art Therapy Focuses on Process Over Product

In an art therapy session, the golden rule is "process over product."

Your therapist is not an art critic or an art teacher. They are not grading your technique, looking at your proportions, or caring if you can only draw stick figures. Instead, they are looking at how you create.

Here is what an art therapist actually pays attention to:

• Your physical state: Are you gripping the marker so hard your knuckles are white? Are your shoulders tense, or did you visibly relax while blending the colors?

• Your choices: Did you choose a massive piece of paper or a tiny one? Did you immediately reach for dark, heavy paints, or soft, light pastels?

• The feeling: How did it feel to rip the paper? What emotion came up when you scribbled violently across the page?

You might spend an entire session just tearing up pieces of cardboard and gluing them into a messy pile, or smearing finger paint on a canvas. If that process helped you release frustration or externalize a chaotic feeling you couldn't put into words, then the art therapy worked perfectly—no matter what the final piece looks like.