Art Therapy Exercises for Self Esteem
Self esteem can be damaged after experiencing trauma: many people have to rebuild their sense of selves and self-worth and find it difficult. However, good self esteem is important in the healing process and can help to eventually reframe traumatic experiences in a way that helps them move forward with their lives.
One way to rebuild self esteem is to engage in art therapy. Here’s our guide to art therapy for self esteem, along with a list of resources.
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is a therapy that engages creativity and artistic production to help clients express themselves and process their emotions. With the help of an appropriately trained counselor or psychotherapist, clients learn to recognize patterns, repetitions, and even narratives in their art and reflect on what helped create these patterns.
Benefits of Art Therapy
Art therapy has many benefits. Creative expression is a safe way to experience emotions and release them in a way that might feel easier than talking about them. Particularly for experiences where describing them might be difficult, drawing or other artmaking is a highly effective way to process emotions. Visual language allows people to communicate via metaphors, and unpacking those metaphors can be a highly effective therapeutic tool.
Not only that but art therapy can:
Provide new perspectives
Foster mindfulness
Connect with other people
Lower stress
Improve cognitive function
Encourage social/emotional learning
Painting Therapy
Painting is a very popular form of art therapy. In addition to its ability to provide color saturation, it’s fun to use paint and feels more intentional than simply drawing. By using paints, clients are able to express themselves using form and color.
Finger Painting
Finger painting is a very tactile form of artmaking that isn’t just for small children: by swirling paint around a page with fingers, it can tap into both the client’s inner child and remain a low-judgment mode of art making that still has figurative elements.
Drawing Therapy
Drawing therapy is one of the lowest barrier forms of art therapy, as all it requires is a pencil and paper. Whether abstract or representational, drawing can be a great way to define, process, and eventually release emotion.
Sketching
Sketching, or the act of depicting actual objects or beings, requires careful attention and observation, either to a mental image or to the model at hand. Because of this, it is great to encourage focus and mindfulness, while also providing client and clinician alike with a concrete figure to discuss. Because sketching depicts objects, it is very helpful for figuring out visual narratives or any metaphors in place.
Scribbling
Scribbling, meanwhile, is nearly a perfect opposite to sketching. The client will absentmindedly scribble on a page, without paying attention to what they are drawing at all. This can be a very cathartic act that provides a unique lens to the subconscious of a client, as scribbling is purely abstract and will often unveil subconscious patterns.
Not only that, but for clients less secure about their ‘artistic skills,’ this is a safe way to absolve them of any anxiety around not being “good” at art- for this exercise, artistic skill is not the point.
Doodling
Doodling is a middle ground between sketching and scribbling: while not trying to depict a specific item or scene, it can play with both abstract and figurative imagery. Because of this, it functions as an effective way to look at both the subconscious of the client and the conscious patterns and narrative-making in play within the client’s perception of past events.
Mixed Media Art Therapy
Mixed media art therapy is a great way to take items a client might already have with them- newspapers, magazines, etc– and repurpose them for creative expression. “Mixed media” refers to the use of multiple types of material, and typically is a very accessible form of art.
Collage
One of the most popular types of mixed media art therapy is a collage. Using assorted printed materials like newspapers, books, magazines, and even photos, clients are able to create their own art that incorporates unique elements cut and pasted or taped together.
Collages allow clients to form their own narratives and artistic pieces, which makes it very effective to reframe events or even reinterpret their own self-narratives. It also can be done anywhere, and serves as an activity that encourages mindfulness and can reduce stress.
A variant of a collage is a mood or vision board, which incorporates collage-style elements to depict a mood or vision a client might have for themselves. This is highly effective at aiding clients in expressing themselves nonverbally.
Altered Books
Altered books are exactly that: books with embellishments that the client adds to creatively express themselves. A very narrative-driven form of art therapy, altered books help clients reflect on the emotions of a given narrative and let them place themselves in the context of the developing plot.
Modeling
Modeling is a great way to make figurative, three-dimensional representations. One of the most tactile of the types of art therapies, it can be very immersive. Clay modeling can be done in the home or in a pottery studio, depending on the type of clay. Plaster modeling requires more materials and preparation, not to mention cleanup. Both involve making three-dimensional figures and can showcase a lot about a client’s sense of self.
Photography Therapy
Photography is a great way to communicate exactly how one sees the world; it can be very therapeutic for clients to take photographs that showcase their lives and circumstances and show their unique perspective on their lives.
Resources
There are many forms of art therapy, and each helps a client to see patterns and/or themselves differently. Through the help of a clinician, a client can engage in a creative activity and gain self awareness and self esteem through the process of artmaking.
Here are some resources on art therapy in Chicago:
https://www.chicagoarttherapycollective.com/resources
https://www.chicagoarttherapycollective.com/
